A world where schoolteachers make $2 million/year
It's great that Steve Jobs has raised the issue of unions holding back quality of education, by preventing bad teachers from being fired. Robert Scoble adds that in addition, teachers should be paid better. Hey, Robert- want to see what the world looks like where good teachers makes as much as athletes or investment bankers? Just go check out South Korea. And soon, it may very well happen in the US. Kenneth Gronbach, writer of a fascinating blog on demographic trends and marketing, points out that the US is about to face a big change in supply and demand for education. Just as millions of additional Generation Y students enter the school system, millions of Baby Boom teachers will be retiring, unreplaced by the much smaller Generation X. The result, to build on Ken's piece, should lead to fierce competition between students for declining supply of quality education. The pressure will rise for good teachers will start to be paid much, much more than mediocre ones. Education is one of the last gargantuan service industries that has yet to restructure for a global, post-industrial world. Competition among suppliers, pay according to merit, radical adoption of technology to improve delivery of service...all these and more are just waiting to happen.