There is an edgy, somewhat scary book out there about the future of American education and the decline of the middle class. The book is Average Is Over, and it was written by economist Tyler Cowen. Here’s what Amazon has to say about it.
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Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation By Tyler Cowen
About the Author
TYLER COWEN is a professor of economics at George Mason University. His blog, Marginal Revolution, is one of the world’s most influential economics blogs. He also writes for the New York Times, Financial Times and The Economist and is the cofounder of Marginal Revolution University. The author of five previous books, Cowen lives in Fairfax, Virginia.
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Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation By Tyler Cowen
About the Author
TYLER COWEN is a professor of economics at George Mason University. His blog, Marginal Revolution, is one of the world’s most influential economics blogs. He also writes for the New York Times, Financial Times and The Economist and is the cofounder of Marginal Revolution University. The author of five previous books, Cowen lives in Fairfax, Virginia.
Editorial Reviews
Praise for Average Is Over
"A buckle-your-seatbelts, swiftly moving tour of the new economic landscape." - Kirkus Reviews
"Cowen has a single core strength...his taste for observations that are genuinely enlightening, interesting, and underappreciated." - The Daily Beast
"A bracing new book" - The Economist
"Tyler Cowen's new book Average is Over makes an excellent followup to his previous work The Great Stagnation and I expect it will set the intellectual agenda in much the way its predecessor did." - Slate
"The author roves broadly and interestingly to make his case, outlining radical economic transformations that lie in store for us, predicting the rise and fall of cities depending on their capacity to adapt to this machine-driven world and offering policy prescriptions for preserving American prosperity." - The Wall Street Journal
"Audacious and fascinating." - The Financial Times
"Thomas Friedman - move over. There's a new guy on the block." - Tampa Bay Tribune
"Eminently readable." - The Brookings Institute
"Cowen has a rare ability to present fundamental economic questions without all of the complexity and jargon that make many economics books inaccessible to the lay reader." - The American Interest
Customer Review4 Stars (out of 5)
The Middle Class Is Dead – An Economist Predicts the FutureBy Patrick Obriant, September 23, 2013
Tyler Cowen writes the terrific Marginal Revolution blog [...], teaches economics at GMU, and in his spare time writes books. In "Average is Over" Cowen examines the trends of the last 30 years including the introduction of smart technology, polarization of high and low wage earners, outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, wage stagnation. Cowen uses the prizm of chess, chess software, and chess software games as both analogy and predictor for future of how technology and technology / human interfaces will evolving and projecting these trends forward into the next 20 - 30 years.
Given the trends from today Cowen's "Average is Over" makes a strong and highly plausible argument for a likely American future. Perhaps even the most likely future.
The good news –
The already expensive, livable, and elite cities become even more so. For those self motivated, hard workers from anywhere in the world and nearly any economic background, the future looks extremely bright. Their tools and access to smarter training gets better and better. Online classes are easy to access worldwide. Smart technology gets smarter becomes "genius" but still works far better with people than without. Productivity (and wages) for these top 10-15% continues to increase. Even if you cannot work with
"genius computers" managing, hiring, training, assisting, or coaching those who can will still be lucrative.
The not so good –
What does the rest of Cowen's America 2033 look like?
Older and poorer. Invest in micro housing and trailer parks in Texas. Maybe it won't be so bad. [...] or maybe it will be.[...]
Cowen correctly points out the huge pitfall in online education. "Online education can thus be extremely egalitarian, but it is egalitarian in a funny way. It can catapult the smart, motivated, but nonelite individuals over the members of the elite communities. It does not, however, push the uninterested student to the head of the pack." The remaining 85% stagnate albeit with access to cheap fun and cheap education. Many of the 85% will live quite well as they benefit from the near free services but others will fall by the wayside.
But maybe it does not have to be this way. Cowen himself points to a potential way out. Education has typically failed to motivate. And even the best online courses are probably even worse than most classroom teachers. "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink." There are however a few coaches who have demonstrated the ability to motivate. [...] I never met Coach Fitz but I certainly met mine as a lazy 8th grader on the football field in the form of a 5 foot 4 inch Woody Hayes disciple named John Short.
Could this be bottled and taught? The future for your kids and the rest of us American 85 percenters may depend on motivators like these.
What the end of average will look like to colleges.
"It will be a brutal age of good schools and also mediocre schools undercutting each other in terms of price and thus tuition revenue. If it costs $200 to serve a class to another student, how long will it be before an educational institution undercuts a competitor charging $2,000 for those credits?"
This is a highly original book. I strongly recommend this especially for a high school senior or college freshmen.
http://www.amazon.com/Average-Over-Powering-America-Stagnation/dp/0525953736/ref=sr_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1383120483&sr=1-1&keywords=average+is+over
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