THE ECONOMICS OF SCHOOLING

By RICHARD ACLAND,

EDUCATION is an investment. It is an investment that may cost thousands of pounds. For instance, a public school and university education will cost about £3,000. In other words, £3,000 has been invested, as much as if it had been used to buy shares in an Indian railroad.

If we are to regard this sum as an investment, then we must ask what yield it returns. If interest is taken at 5 per cent., it would give the return of £I5o, which is actually rather low for an investment that can only last the lifetime of its owner—roughly 4o years. £175 would, however, cover it comfortably. This means that the owner of the investment ought to be able to earn £175 a year in addition to whatever he would have received without the benefit of his superior education.

A plain " uneducated " man—an agricultural worker for instance—receives about £70 a year for life. The skilled mechanic may get about £4 during the best years of his career. His income is actually about double that of the average wage of all employed people. Provided he was never unemployed, his income during seven distinct seven- year periods of his life would probably be as follows : To find how much the investment should be worth to the owner annually during his lifetime, you must add £175 to the income he could secure if he was simply an " uneducated " man. For the first seven-year period this gives £250 (L75+ £175) annually. But the University man can hardly expect to start earning £5 a week right away. Actually the figures in the second column below are more practical, for they allow him to recover, with interest, in the forties and fifties of his life, what he lost in the early twenties and thirties.

From 2o-27

• •

£250

(D5o) per annum 3)

27-34 £275

(£250) ,, 7, 33

34-41

£325 (£375) 33

35

3,

41-48

• •

£325

(k450

„

33

48-55

£375

(L52)

33 ,,

33

55-62

£375

(000

13 33

„

62-69

• •

£325

(k4°°) 11 13

These then are the ranges of income which the University

From 20-27

s, 27-34

£75 per annum

£100 33

33

34-41

£150

,3 41-48

£150 „

33

„

48-55

£200

53

55-62

£200

„

62-69

£150

33

man ought to expect if he regards his education in the light of an investment. But this is not going to satisfy him.

When I was at the university in 1924-27 I knew what I wanted, and so did other men. Our ideas ran, I think, to mar- riage—(yes, in spite of the fashionable " modern " morality, we really meant marriage)—with three children, who would, of course, go to public school and university themselves later. And a car, a rather big, fast car. Some foreign travel. One or more of the field sports, and a full social life—pre- ferably in the heart of London, theatres, parties, and so on— all the gaiety of the West End. Then some snug little place in the country, or on the coast with a little boat. Of course we meant to do some work as well—work quite hard at some interesting and rather individual job. This was our modest expectation of life.

£3,00o ambitions on £175 dividend ! I don't think that the University man is to be blamed for these extravagant ideas. They are forced on him by the very life he leads at college. It quite logically demonstrates to him that the proper development of a youth at £30o a year (and most of us had rather more than that) is to an adult life at £3,000.

Actually, as I have shown above, the University man is entitled to no more than £450 a year at the age of 35. This is simply a fair return for his investment. He has no right to expect more. Yet he is taught to have ambitions that require an income nearly seven times greater than that to which his investment entitles him. One can hardly expect University men to be content with this state of affairs. They think that the world has given them a thoroughly raw deal.

If these unhappy circumstances would force the University man to consider the world as a whole and to wonder why it was that the standard of life is so low, when it might be so much higher, all this would be to the good. A few of them do this—but most of them do not. Plans for the raising of the general level of life from the £120 standard to, say, the £180 standard in the next ten years make no appeal whatever. These merely mean that the £45o income will rise to isle—and the University man wants his L3,000. He is, in fact, far more likely to turn his mind to Fascism than to Communism. In extreme cases, if £3,000 is un- attainattle, a pair of field boots and a length of rubber tubing seem to be the least undesirable alternative means of asserting his superiority over the common herd. How then can we hope to bring high-flying ambition into line with earthly prospects ? Two things are necessary. A pretty considerable de-bunking of the public school and University man—a rather more general realisation—on his part—that he is not after all so very different from the other fellow ; and a more general realisation of the extraordinarily high standard of civilisation that can be achieved on £450 a year if it is managed rightly.

Does someone say that neither of these things will happen ? I say that something is beginning already which will tend to produce both. The present development of the senior school system and the eventual raising of the school-leaving age, will so enormously improve State education that in fifteen years' time the middle class, and some of the upper class, will cease to make the absurd sacrifices necessary in order to purchase what is probably an inferior education from a private establishment. At the same time, I would prophesy that the public schools, the residential schools, will not maintain popular support unless they agree to take at least 5o per cent. of their pupils from the State schools. The process of transition will perhaps be painful, but once it has been accomplished it will do more to destroy class snobbery than many other things that might be proposed.

Neither of these suggestions is revolutionary. In Denmark and Sweden, solely through the excellence of the State education, all classes send their children to the State schools. It is dangerous to generalise from the results of a short visit to any country, but it seemed to me that in those countries, perhaps as a result of this system, there was more confidence and dignity among those who were doing the humbler jobs, and more understanding and good fellowship among those who were privileged to be doing the more interesting and better paid work. Meanwhile England continues with a system that seems to imagine you can have L3,000 hopes on £175 prospects.