Low Productivity, What Impact Does Education Have?

US innovators claim they have never been busier, but their ideas are persistently failing to transform the country’s economic data. Labour productivity fell an annual 1.9 per cent in the first three months of the year, while unit labour costs rose

Source: Low productivity alarms US policy makers – FT.com

I commented but more in the form of a question.

“How much impact does education have on productivity?

I’m not an economist but I am a math professor who has watched US higher education evolve into a business that caters to the “wants” of naïve, uneducated, driven-by-emotion, “consumers”, instead of the needs of what were once quaintly known as “students”.

If anyone has the answer, I would appreciate a reply, either here, or on my blog inside-higher-ed , or by email

Thanks”

Then I added another comment that is a question.

“I just posted a question.  I have another one.

First, let’s assume that I and The Economist are right about higher education in America.  My views are on my blog.  Here is a summary from The Economist .

“…If graduates earn more than non-graduates because their studies have made them more productive, then university education will boost economic growth and society should want more of it. Yet poor student scores suggest otherwise…”

It seems to me that nationally misallocating a large sum of money to a non-productive project could be very damaging to an economy.

(It gets worse.  High School teachers go to college where they may well not learn much at all, and, thus….well, you get the idea.)”