Will education predict elections?

Here’s some amazing news from the wide and wild world of the workforce: last week was marked by the ratification of the first trade union agreement, which establishes the rules for drinking alcohol at work. The employer is Brass Jar Productions Drunk Shakespearedescribed less than poetically as “one professional actor drinks five shots of whiskey and then tries to act in a Shakespeare play.” As the four sober actors try to keep the show going, “hilarity and mayhem ensues.”

According to the union, the contract provides the actors with health benefits and sick leave. (Apparently, both are required.) According to the company, “drinking and performing is a story as old as time!” (as well as Beauty and the Beastonly they don’t drink tea). “We’re thrilled to receive the Seal of Approval from the Screen Actors Guild… to bring our brand of boozy, outrageous and professional entertainment to audiences.”

While most people would say they’re not interested in watching drunk people, the appearance of Drunken Shakespeare, which plays tonight in five cities (New York, DC, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix) and described less than truthfully Slate as “the best thing that ever happened to theatre” – demonstrates that they really are. It’s not just a drunken Shakespeare or a Comedy Central show A drunken storyas well as Brass Jar’s Drunk Dracula performed seasonally on Halloween: “One actor takes five takes and attempts an epic retelling of Transylvania thirsty bachelor”.

I’ve been thinking about the gap between claimed benefits and discovered benefits since I attended Apprenticeships for America last Human Potential Summit convening on Make Colorado a leading state for apprenticeships. Julie Stone, Colorado’s Director of Family Economic Mobility Gary Community Ventures – the liquidation fund to improve economic mobility in Colorado and co-sponsor of the event – opened the meeting with the words:

In Gary, teaching is on our list of big bets that have yet to succeed. Can you name any system-level solution that would be more widely accepted but is this narrow? A problem where the gap between claimed and discovered benefits has been so wide… for so long?

Julie makes a good point about the gap between expressed and revealed preferences. In education and the workforce, this phenomenon is not limited to apprenticeships, it is ubiquitous. In K-12 surveys, parents consistently say they are satisfied with their child’s public school (70% in the latest Gallup poll) – and teachers (82%). With great advantage they also claim support teacher unions. But the revealed benefits tell a different story. For decades, millions of families voted with their feet and switched to charter schools, now 3.7 million students are enrolled in 8,000 public schools. And post-Covid, Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) are all the rage. Currently, 33 states offer state funding for private schools without restrictions (universal choice) in 12 states. In the eight states with new active universal choice programs, ESAs already represent 6% of state-funded K-12 enrollments. Meanwhile, even in states without school choice legislation, public school enrollment has declined over the past decade, especially in the largest districts. Registration is reduced to approx 85% of the 100 largest districts including:

· Chicago -20%

LA -15%

· Boston -15%

· Philadelphia -13%

· New York -12%

The gap between expressed and revealed preferences is also evident in higher education. Whereas a strong majority of adults support public funding community colleges (82%) and public university systems (69%), they do not encourage their children to enroll: Over the past decade, community college enrollment decreased by 32% while the total number of students in public four-year institutions down 9%. Last week, we learned that in the fall of 2024, freshmen will be admitted to state four-year courses fell 8.5% since a year ago

The common thread is economic insecurity. Given the staggeringly rapid changes in good jobs (hybrid or remote), what kind of work is being done in those jobs (digital transformation, especially AI), and the hiring processes for those jobs (increasingly automated, especially at the top of the hiring funnel), I don’t know any parents , who would think that their children will follow similar or even recognizable career paths. Add to that a sharper-than-ever dichotomy between entry-level jobs that pay a living wage and seem to have a career path, and jobs that are both or neither. All this makes parents very nervous.

Because of this concern, we are seeing a sharp shift in enrollments to the largest and most dynamic urban areas at public universities. While many rural campuses have seen double-digit declines, schools in big cities are holding their own. Because there are jobs there. Similarly, the number of applications to the most famous universities has increased dramatically. Because that’s where the best employers recruit. It has also caused students to flock from languages, humanities and social sciences to pre-professional majors such as health sciences and pseudo-professional majors such as business and marketing. And it explains the rise of Northeastern (and its co-op program) from a non-selective suburban school to The acceptance rate is 5.2%.. It also predicts high demand for apprenticeships, which will fill the gap that Julie just pointed out solve the problem of providing apprenticeships (maybe starting with Colorado!).

In education, our revealed preferences are now radically different from our stated preferences for one simple reason: most of us think our children will be worse off; we fear for the economic future of our children. Our children are also scared; to remember Harvard survey the majority of respondents aged 18-29 no longer support free market capitalism. So, as long as we keep saying one thing, we make choices that seem safer. If we had our drusers, we would smooth things over: let the highs not be so high, if the lows are not so low. And if that means giving up the American dream, so be it. Most parents and young people would agree to Canada.

With declared preferences in next week’s presidential election effectively tied, pundits are having a hard time predicting what the vote will reveal. In most election years, if there is a significant difference between stated and revealed preferences, it is because voters say they support pro-social policies but ultimately choose candidates who will benefit them personally, such as by lowering taxes. We saw this in the 2016 and 2020 polls consistently inflated support for Democratic candidates.

There are many reasons to believe in these elections poll bias continues to favor the Democratic Party and forecast markets agree It also stands to reason that after several years of high inflation and tens of millions of Americans living paycheck to paycheck trying to make ends meet, voters would change the party in power. Meanwhile, Democratic supporters are predicting the opposite outcome, perhaps with more emotion than logic.

Whereas conventional wisdom says so Education is now the most important factor In predicting how someone will vote — for example, in 2020, President Biden won 83 of the 100 most educated districts, while President Trump won nine of the 10 least educated districts — education is already factored into the deadlock polls. But can the discrepancy between stated and revealed educational preferences predict what should happen? It’s worth studying because this election will determine our course on education and on more fronts than most of us care to think.

If the electorate is going to show its preference for a safer choice, everyone knows Donald Trump. He led the country for four years, and most Americans consider his tenure to be the end pink glasses. Meanwhile, many voters feel they don’t know Vice President Harris. So in this formulation, President Trump is a known commodity, a safer bet.

But keep in mind that a known product is famous for risk and recklessness (hundreds of examples come to mind), and an unknown product is criticized for scripted or disciplinary and overly cautious. No one exemplifies the boom and bust – the outbursts and tussles with the justice system – of the American dream more than President Trump. Conversely, few candidates are more overconfident than Vice President Harris. The fear of impulsive and disastrous decisions during Trump’s second term and the thousands of federal appointments based on loyalty and ideology rather than competence is met on the other side by the fear that Vice President Harris will not make significant personnel changes or any new or different decisions.

Since one of these things is not like the other, in this rare case, it’s a safe bet that most voters in the seven swing states won’t consider the known commodity a safe choice or a safer pair of hands. For this, they will turn to an unknown product. So, if our attitudes toward education are any indication that most Americans are willing to buy into the Canadian dream, they’re going to settle for a candidate who went to high school in Canada.

If it proves true, we’ll be able to look back in a week (or two). storm und drang 2024 presidential election and recognize that digital transformation and economic anxiety have not only changed our educational preferences, they have also made the American electorate somewhat more risk-averse, or at least more risk-averse in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin

The catch – and it’s a big one – is that this theory depends on the level of information and education of voters. Voters must be able to assess risk and security, if not effectively, then at least adequately or even plausibly. If our education system is so broken that low-propensity voters can’t do it, or if their economic condition, caused by catastrophic economic change and the failure of our education system, makes them feel (wrongly) like they have nothing to lose, then we’re in some recursive educational cycle.

In addition to information and education, there is the issue of sobriety. There is always the possibility that millions will vote after drinking five glasses of whiskey. But while it may be acceptable or amusing to perform Shakespeare, if we want to be able to say All’s well that ends well, you can’t vote drunk.