Transcript THE INCENTIVES TO LEARN - University of South Australia

Issues at the lower end of the labour market
The Policy Goal of Participation
Across the developed world, policy aims for higher levels
of participation and achievement by:
 Young people in initial E&T
 Adults in continuing education, CPD and lifelong
learning
The UK Problem
 Low achievement within compulsory schooling
 Middling post-compulsory participation (much
remedial), adult learning skewed towards top end of
occupational ladder.
 Polarised achievement across population, poor
showing in OECD league tables
Frames for Policy Analysis
1.
Rates of return (RoR)
2. Decision-making, career choice
3. Cultural values, attitudes to learning and aspirations.
4. Barriers to learning
5. Incentives?????
Rates of return
 Dominant analytical frame in UK
 Vast number of studies looking at many different
types/levels of qualification and sections of
student/learner population
 Backward looking
 Averages often artificial and misleading
 Descriptive device – little explanation of results
 Often blind to other factors (e.g height, appearance,
psychological traits, etc)
Decision making and career choice
1. Economically rational, human capital.
2. Social relationships structure action and constrain
perceived options (Durkheim, Bordieu)
Research suggests decision-making is not simple or
linear.
Cultural values, attitudes and aspirations
 Individuals
 Social classes
 Ethnic groups
 Gender
 Communities
Some research has looked at the above, some at the
cultures and dispositions inside schools and colleges.
Raising aspiration – the new ‘solution’
UK Government white paper 2009 - raising the
aspirations of white, working class young men in
North of England.
Policy interpretations may downplay material
underpinnings.
Groupings (e.g. NEETs) may be complex.
Barriers to learning
Exploration of a wide range of barriers, such as:
 Lack of finance
 Time poverty
 Fear of failure
 Lack of transport
 Lack of relevance (including to work)
Incentives – a missing link?
In order to make sense of what we already know, we need
to bring together RoR, and understandings of how and
why choices are made.
We also need to have a clearer and more complete map
of the incentives that act on people when making their
choices.
Incentives as a key focus
Understanding the incentive structures individuals face
could be key to making progress, but first we have to:
 Know what the various incentives are
 How they interact
 What force they exert 9not least relative to one
another)
 Have some model about how they might be altered
A Framework for Thinking About
Incentives?
What follows is one (evolving and incomplete) attempt to
develop a framework to map, analyse, explain (and possibly
think about how to alter) the incentives to learn.
It engages with ‘theories of the middle range’
It aims to provide a focal point for a more integrative analysis
of different streams of data on a range of economic, social
and cultural structures and forces.
Incentive Generation Through:
The PULL of opportunities, both to learn and to utilise that
learning, for pleasure (intrinsic reward), to benefit others
(altruistic reward), or (financial) gain.
The PUSH of resources, expectations and social
relationships which enable and sustain learning - e.g.
educational institutions, teachers, courses, libraries,
systems of student financial and pastoral support, and also
cultural and social expectations and encouragement (e.g.
well-educated parents who help a child to learn through
support, exhortation and example).
Incentive Generation Sequence
RESOURCE PUSH AND OPPORTUNITY PULL
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Leading to
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INCENTIVES OF VARYING FORCE
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Leading to
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EFFECTS OF VARYING STRENGTH
A Typology of Incentives
Type 1 Incentives: generated within the E&T
system, producing intrinsic rewards through the
act of learning. Develop and sustain positive
attitudes towards participation and progression.
Type 2 Incentives: generated in wider society and
the labour market, and the rewards they create are
external to the learning process itself.
Examples of Type 1 Incentives
 Curriculum design and pedagogic styles that increase the
intrinsic interest of learning.
 Forms of assessment that are designed to encourage further
participation rather than ration access to the next level.
 Institutional cultures in schools and colleges that nurture
potential and celebrate achievement.
Discussion of Type 1 Incentives
Endless waves of educational reform around making:
 Curriculum
 Pedagogy/teaching styles
 Assessment and certification
 Institutional structures
 Technology
produce stronger Type 1 incentives. In England, the evidence
suggests that the limits of the PUSH that this can achieve
have been reached (or indeed passed).
Examples of Type 2 Incentives
 Wage returns to particular qualifications or skills.
 Other benefits (intrinsic interest of job, opportunities for
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progression, travel, etc).
Social status from higher level occupation.
Licence to practice and mandatory CPD regulations
Cultural expectations within society or particular ethnic or
class segments therein.
Non-economic benefits to do with enhanced satisfaction in
other aspects of adult life - sporting, cultural, parental, etc.
A New Incentive Sub-Category
Type 1b Incentives
In recent times, in the UK, the failure of Type 2
incentives to prove strong enough to catalyse
major increases in participation have led policy
makers to introduce a range of subsidy-based
incentives to act in lieu of signals from the labour
market. They assume that Type 2 incentives
cannot be changed, so substitutes are needed.
Problems with Type 1b Incentives
 Complex and Expensive (particularly in paying for things
that would have happened anyway - ‘deadweight’)
 Partial - evidence suggests subsidy will encourage some
children to stay on in education, but they fail to achieve
anything.
 Ephemeral - subsidising employers to train their adult
workers fails to leave any ‘afterglow’. Subsidy may not alter
attitudes towards investment in skill and when the tap is
turned off, training ends.
Analysing Type 1&2 Incentives
There are a number of ways you can cross-cut Type 1&2
incentives:
 Coverage
 Strength
 Duration
 Complexity and uncertainty
 Complementarity
Positive and Negative Incentives
Both Type 1 & 2 incentives can generate either positive or
negative effects.
For example, the wage returns for an adult worker to getting a
qualification may be positive, but the time/quality of life
costs of out of working hours learning produce a stronger
negative incentive.
Many people do not enjoy schooling, feel they ‘failed’ and this
subsequently puts them off adult learning.
Incentive Coverage
 The strength, scale and certainty of many Type 1 incentives
are dependent upon course, teacher, and institution.
 Incentives are mediated by individuals’ innate ability and
preferences (e.g. many might wish to become a professional
dancer, but not all will have the ability).
 Unequal societies and polarised labour markets will tend to
produce unequally structured and distributed Type 1 & 2
incentives.
Incentive Strength
Some incentives are absolute - e.g. LtP regulation means the
qualification is essential. In many OECD countries this
incentive has a large impact on participation and
achievement in initial E&T.
Other Type 2 incentives vary greatly in their strength, and the
tendency to use average RoRs disguises this.
Large/Strong Incentives = academic, higher level, and elite
institutions.
Small/Weak Incentives = vocational, lower level, and low
status institutions.
Incentive Strength Cont.
In some cases the incentive strength will be large enough
to over-ride narrow economic rationality.
More follow journalism, and performing arts courses
than can reasonably expect to gain employment in
these occupations.
Incentive Duration
The immediate impact of many Type 1 Incentives is
transitory, but they can produce lasting positive
dispositions towards the act of learning.
Many Type 2 Incentives operate across an entire
working lifetime, encouraging both engagement
with initial E&T and also with continuing adult
learning.
Complexity and Uncertainty
Many Type 2 Incentives are complex and uncertain - e.g. the
outcomes of acquiring a qualification vary according to:
 Age
 Gender
 Type and level of qualification
 Subject and occupation it is related to
 Location in which learning takes place (workplace v. nonworkplace) and status of learning provider and awarding
body.
 Who pays for it.
Participation Does Not = Achievement
Many policy makers fail to apprehend that participation
imposes costs, while not guaranteeing achievement. Too
often the policy literature on E&T slides from participation
to achievement to labour market outcome, while ignoring
the risks.
Perhaps those choosing not to participate realise/calculate
they have a lower chance of achieving and are making a
rational choice?
Complexity = Uncertainty
Those at the lower end of the ability range/labour
market often face the weakest and most uncertain
Type 2 labour market incentives.
For those who cannot aspire to enter Higher Education,
the choices may be poor, and non-participation
rational.
Grouping and Complementarity
Incentives can reinforce or undermine one another. Good jobs produce
strong incentives - pay levels, social status, progression & intrinsic
interest. Bad jobs the opposite. In the UK, the geography of both good
and bad jobs is becoming more concentrated. In areas where bad jobs
are growing, the incentives to local people to invest in learning may be
weakening.
Boosting one incentive can reduce another. For example, expanding HE
will reduce the range of labour market opportunities and incentives
available to non-graduates. Win/win scenarios are quite hard to
contrive.
Incentives for low end workers
Why are incentives weak:
 Weak occupational identities and low skill
requirements
 Narrow conceptions of vocational learning and skill,
that do not support progression
 Competence-based qualifications that embody 1 & 2
 A weakly-regulated labour market, little LtP
 Hold of VQs on recruitment limited
 Opportunities for labour market progression limited
Implications for Policy
 A close analysis of existing incentives may not support the
‘happy ending’ that policy has already decided upon.
 Choices that appear ‘bad’ to policy makers may be more
rational than policy makers choose to believe.
 A strong reliance on Type 1b Incentives is a good way to
waste money. The real problems lie with cultural
expectations, class structures, the shape of labour market
and the lack of labour market regulation.
More Implications
Because policy makers misread the incentive structure they
set schools and colleges up to fail, expecting them to
produce Type 1 incentives that can compensate for:
 unemployment and poverty
 lack of supportive parents and family life
 poor housing
 drug and alcohol abuse
 limited local amenities
 a local labour market that offers limited opportunities
i.e. a PUSH to compensate for lack of PULL factors
A Polarised Labour Market = Polarised
Incentives
The larger the Higher Education sector, the smaller the range
of good jobs open to non-graduates. If the ‘top half’ of
young people go into HE and ‘graduate jobs’, what do the
bottom half go into (and the bottom half of the bottom
half)?
In a world where the number of good jobs is finite, and the
number of less good (low paid) jobs may either be stable or
growing, there are real issues about the incentives on offer
to those destined to enter such work.
Individualisation fails
“We need to change the culture in this country around
skills, so that when someone complains they are in a
low-paid, dead-end job, people ask them what they are
doing to improve their skills” – UK Government, 2007.
 But you can train away low (qualified) workers, you
cannot necessarily train away the jobs they occupy.
 Low pay is often the result of power imbalances (weak
TUs, lack of collective bargaining)rather than skill
The individual does not control…..
 The product market strategies, models of production
design, work organisation, job design and people
management that their employer chooses.
 A more skilled worker may not be able to change them.
 The leverage that publicly-funded training
interventions have to change them is also open to
doubt.
The central paradox
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
A continued belief in ‘flexible’ labour markets
A concern that there are too many bad jobs that are
not vanishing of their own accord
Concern about social and income inequality, and
lack of social mobility
A rejection of collectivist solutions to 2&3
An inkling that publicly-funded increases in E&T, of
itself, will not solve these problems
The answer…….?
Primary Answer:
Structural problems can only be addressed via
structurally-rooted solutions. Without change in
the way the labour market (rather than the E&T
system) operates, the incentives to learn faced by
lower end workers will remain poor, patchy, weak
and uncertain.
The answer………?
Secondary Answer:
The capacity of lower end vocational courses and
certification to support:
 Wider learning and understanding (beyond job task)
 Economic empowerment
 Subsequent learning and progression (intellectual and
career-related)
 Citizenship and wider community roles
Has got to be expanded. Why are we aiming so low
at present?