Productivity in the Education Sector

 

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel”  -- Socrates

Walter Russell Mead put up a new blog post which is recommended reading. Although it is quite long, it lays some groundwork for what I think is an important set of circumstances soon to affect us all. Among the ideas it presents (and that I agree with) are:

1. There is an education bubble. Much like other organized labor bubbles (both public and private sector), this one is also about to pop.
2. Productivity has been the one thing that repeatedly saves our bacon when things get dicey, as in great recessions, for example.
3. Productivity in the education business will be a major change, in that the whole idea of teachers and classrooms may soon be widely seen as out of date. People will find more efficient ways to learn what they want to learn, and sheepskins will be replaced with achievement tests. Testing out of college, as it were will be the norm for the gifted.
4. That those who currently "deliver education" will first ask for subsidies on the old processes. Resistance to their calls will be branded as heartless; but the transformation will be eventually seen as real progress. 
5. Productivity will eventually infuse all of our information based institutions. Lawyers could be replaced by robo-lawyers in very short order. Productivity in the lawyerscape means faster and faster information processing to the point that a legal brief will be available at the push of a button. Why would this not be true of other services we currently rely on people to provide?

I personally was wondering, even worrying about where the next productivity growth was going to come from. I think Mr. Mead may have unlocked a large piece of it here.