Race Between Education and Technology

The book is out. These are major academics, fyi.

Excerpt here. (pdf file)


blurb:

This book provides a careful historical analysis of the co-evolution of educational attainment and the wage structure in the United States through the twentieth century. The authors propose that the twentieth century was not only the American Century but also the Human Capital Century. That is, the American educational system is what made America the richest nation in the world. Its educational system had always been less elite than that of most European nations. By 1900 the U.S. had begun to educate its masses at the secondary level, not just in the primary schools that had remarkable success in the nineteenth century.

The book argues that technological change, education, and inequality have been involved in a kind of race. During the first eight decades of the twentieth century, the increase of educated workers was higher than the demand for them. This had the effect of boosting income for most people and lowering inequality. However, the reverse has been true since about 1980. [ed.: 1980 was the year in which the 17-year decline in SAT scores bottomed out] This educational slow-down was accompanied by rising inequality. The authors discuss the complex reasons for this, and what might be done to ameliorate it.

Table of Contents

Part I: Economic Growth and Distribution
1. The Human Capital Century
2. Inequality across the Twentieth Century
3. Skill-biased Technological Change

Part II: Education for the Masses in Three Transformations
4. The Origins of the Virtues
5. Economic Foundations of the High School Movement
6. America's Graduation from High School
7. Mass Higher Education in the Twentieth Century

Part III. The Race
8. The Race between Education and Technology
9. How America Once Led and Can Win the Race for Tomorrow

related: public confidence in the schools

In the early 1970s, not only did most Americans believe that the public schools were functioning reasonably well, a sizable majority of adults thought that public education had actually improved since they were kids. Today, only a small minority of Americans share this optimistic view. Instead, the majority now believes that schools have gotten significantly worse. Fully half of all Americans are dissatisfied with America’s public education system, a deep concern shared by black and white parents alike.

The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke
by Elizabeth Warren & Amelia Warren Tyagi

It looks to me as if public confidence in the schools declined at the same time Goldin and Katz find public education no longer keeping pace with developing technology -- and no longer serving to decrease inequality.


Steve Levitt summarizes The Race in 2 sentences
Jimmy graduates

The anemic response of skill investment to skill premium growth
The declining American high school graduation rate: Evidence, sources, and consequences
Pushy parents raise more successful kids

The Race Between Education and Technology book review
The Race Between Ed & Tech: excerpt & TOC & SAT scores & public loss of confidence in the schools
The Race Between Ed & Tech: the Great Compression
the Great Compression, part 2
ED in '08: America's schools
comments on Knowledge Schools
the future
the stick kids from mud island
educated workers and technology diffusion
declining value of college degree
Goldin, Katz and fans
best article thus far: Chronicle of Higher Education on The Race
Tyler Cowan on The Race (NY Times)
happiness inequality down...
an example of lagging technology diffusion in the U.S.
the Times reviews The Race, finally
IQ, college, and 2008 election
Bloomington High School & "path dependency"
the election debate that should have been