The Economics of Education

It has become part of the conventional wisdom in the economics of education that subsidies to higher education have a regressive distributional effect. Given that relatively more children from wealthier families enroll in higher education, many economist assume that these subsidies to higher education have an unwanted distributional impact.

Given the abundance of open education initiatives that aim to make educational assets freely available online, the time seems ripe to explore the potential of open education to transform the economics and ecology of education. Despite the diversity of tools and resources already available–from well-packaged course materials to simple games, for students, self-learners, faculty, and educational institutions–we have yet to take full advantage of shared knowledge about how these are being used, what local innovations are emerging, and how to learn from and build on the experiences of others.

Every profession has its own language. Law, medicine, science,business, economics, psychology, sociology—each of these fields has evolved a specialized vocabulary that its members use to communicate with one another. Perhaps this language is necessary to discuss sophisticated ideas that are beyond the understanding of the average citizen; perhaps not. The result, if not the intent, is to mystify the public.