Paying Economists by Hair Color? Thoughts on Masters Degrees & Teacher Compensation
Posted on October 6, 2013
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In previous posts, I’ve conveyed my distaste for the oft obsessively narrow thinking of the traditional labor economist when engaged in education policy research. I’ve picked on the assumption that greed and personal interest are necessarily the sole driving force of all human rational decision making. And I’ve picked on the obsession with narrow and circular validity tests.Yet still, sometimes, I see quotes from researchers I otherwise generally respect, that completely blow my mind.
I gotta say, this quote from Tom Kane of Harvard regarding compensation for teachers holding masters degrees is right up there with the worst of them – most notably because it conveys such an obscenely narrow perspective of compensation policies (public or private sector) and broader complexities of labor market dynamics.
The quote comes to us from the Wall Street Journal the other day:
“Paying teachers on the basis of master’s degrees is equivalent to paying them based on hair color,” said Thomas J. Kane, an economist at the Harvard Graduate
