Putting “choose” in quotation marks is the main part of the title and a hint to my subjective view on the issue to be discussed in this post.
Based on my own experience and on the experience of my friends and acquaintances I came to the conclusion that most Georgian youths do not autonomously choose to get higher education, rather their choice is made directly by their parents. This is the case when parents impose their will upon their children. This is a case of paternalism, which means imposing your own will upon another person for his/her own good. The paternalistic approach assumes that the imposer knows better.
In Georgia, such an approach could be justified given the average age of a youth entering higher education institutions, which should be around 17 years. I think 17 is an age when a person is not sure about his/her priorities and needs in life. By Georgian law, at this age, a person is not even fully legally responsible. Therefore, the paternalistic approach from parents could be justified. However, the problem is that 17 is not a good age for choosing your path in life and parents should not decide for their children. Though they are morally and legally justified, their action is, I believe, wrong from a purely practical point of view.
The Georgian government has already pursued one good reform, which automatically deals with this problem to some extent – in 2007 the shift to 12-year general education from 11-year general education was completed. This has given Georgian youth one more year to mature and think about their priorities. But of course this is not enough. I think another good policy to pursue would be to make military service mandatory straight after completing general secondary education. This way, the government would indirectly compel youth to shift their decision forward by at least two more years. Thus, it would become less likely that parental will is imposed upon their children once they are over 20. However, because military service is mandatory only for males in Georgia, this policy would not be applicable to female youths and thus, it would most likely cause inequality in education, social status and income between sexes.
So, I am claiming that entering higher education institution at 17 is bad because it is frequently not the autonomous decision of an individual; however I have not yet mentioned the real negative consequences which are associated with such behavior - to name just a few - low grades, absence of interest in studying, absence of corresponding talent, motivation etc. Those consequences directly lower the quality of education and as a result good students also suffer from such negative externalities.
Comments
Is "not allowing somebody to decide until he is 20" not paternalistic?
Hi,
thanks for the nice post,
the topic is very actual for Georgia, I think,
I agree that most of the students are not mature enough when they are choosing their profession, but on the other hand, in order to have clear interests and be capable of making mature decisions, only years are not enough. By making military service mandatory for everyone right after they finish secondary education is not a solution to the problem, in order to help school children make better informed decisions regarding their profession, they must have some independent life experience. Being in the military service for two years is less likely to provide any rich life experience for 18 years old citizens because of the specifics of military service, on the contrary, two years at military service might restrict their free thinking and impoverish their ideology.
To my mind, more meaningful solution would be to provide youth with the possibility to work on different jobs before they go for university. Jobs that does not require high qualification and expertise, mainly in the service sector. Schools should not only be oriented on providing skills that will help children to succeed in graduate schools, but also to prepare them for working in different entry level positions, these might be salesman in banks or a guide in the tourism sector. This will help school graduates to see in real what actually life feels like, what they prefer and are able to do in the future. Working, travelling, experiencing different situations helps to mature one's personality, this is not only years that turns school children into grown-ups.
thanks
Very much agree with Giorgi's analysis and Leqso's "policy" suggestions. Basic schooling, starting with the elementary level, should not be designed or judged based on the quantity of technical skills or information it provides. Unfortunately, all the existing tests that I am aware of, including international surveys such as TIMMS (http://nces.ed.gov/timss/) and PISA (http://www.pisa.oecd.org), as well as the Georgian Uniform Exam only measure technical skills and the mastering of languages and information ("which king ruled Georgia in which year and what did he build or destroyed). Such kind of skill-focused education does not do much to help kids make good/mature choices about their future education and occupation.
The military service would only delay the need to make a choice, without making the kids any more prepared for making it. If anything, a 6-9 month obligatory CIVIL SERVICE would be a much better policy if the purpose were to make kids better citizens while allowing them to understand their own interests and abilities. Such a service would only "cost" one year of the kids' life while helping them avoid costly mistakes.
A bit of personal evidence: I served 3 years as a paratrooper in the Israeli military during the Lebanese campaign of 1982-85. This kind of military service certainly helped me understand the limits of my physical abilities and mental strength/weaknesses, however it did not make me any more prepared for, or informed about, my educational and occupational choices. In fact, I left the army without any idea about what I want to do, and ended up "killing" two more years in one of the Israeli secret services... That was a poor professional choice indeed, but during these two years (which I spent on different missions outside Israel) did help me understand that a) I must study and b) I am mainly interested in human behavior and social sciences. Unfortunately, I was able to determine this only at the age of 24.
Totally agree with Leqso.
12 year general education is just waste of time. army also is not the solution. May be structure of general education should be changed. Pupils should get more information about different jobs and chance to have practice.
@RT: You are definitely right - "not allowing somebody to decide until he/she is 20" is paternalistic. I do not see paternalism as generally "bad" approach. I just say that in this specific case parents urging their children to continue higher education right after school is not an optimal decision of a parent. Its a wrong decision and this is exactly what I mean when I say that it is wrong from a purely practical point of view - I cite: "Though they (parents) are morally and legally justified, their action is, I believe, wrong from a purely practical point of view". Also, for completeness of argument, I should add that the last paragraph of the post explains why the decision is wrong from a purely practical point of view.
@Leqso: Leqso, your suggestion is great. However, when I was writing the post I wanted to think about more or less feasible solution to the problem. Providing all those school graduates with internships and jobs, I think, is not feasible at this moment. Even university graduates can not find entry level jobs because of low economic performance. Thus, pursuing the policy suggested by you directly requires a sudden jump in economic growth. I think this is the ideal which we all are craving for. On the other hand, you mentioned one of the biggest cons of making military service mandatory right after completing school which is that youth will not make "much better informed decisions" after completing military service. Here some mixture of Eric's suggestion about Civil Service and your suggestion about schools preparing children for working at various entry level positions should help.
Giorgi, I do very well understand why you don't like what is happening and have no problem with that. I do have problem with your proposed solution a) because it is as paternalistic as what you criticize (although now you say some paternalism is good and some is bad) and b) because as pointed out by other comments it actually does not solve anything.
Actually, now that I think about it, I am not sure parents' insistence is not an optimal decision, on the contrary. What we deal with is a bad Nash equilibrium and deviating from it, does not make things better, only worse. Ideally, we would switch to a good Nash equilibrium but that requires a lot of people switching not just parents of a few children.
There are several reasons why parents push their children into universities and many of them are pure economics.
1. In the current environment there are not many other options for fresh high-school graduates. In the West young people travel (which is expensive in Georgia) or work (which is extremely difficult in the current labor market in Georgia for a person of 17 years with no education). So it is either wasting time (and maybe turning to doing wrong things) or going to study (although at some monetary expense)
2. Again, in the current environment a person in his/her early 20s can get a decent job if s/he knows a foreign language, is computer-savvy, and has a higher education diploma. To get there, one needs to enter university and the best time to do that is right after school, when one still remembers what s/he has been taught.
3. Peer pressure and "prestige." You gotta get higher education because most of your peers are trying to do the same. Again, to be successful, the best time is right after high school.
4. Finally, I did not realize that military is still mandatory. In my time -- and I guess it is the same now -- that was an extra argument to get into a university to avoid wasting two years of your life.
So, as you can see, there are plenty of arguments in favor of this paternalism. Again, it is not the first best solution, because one may end up doing things s/he does not care for, but alternative seems worse. Until the peer pressure abates (that is clearly the bad Nash equilibrium story), until the economic environment is different, and until military is non-mandatory, it _is_ optimal to push your child into higher education.
It may indeed be optimal for the individual parents to push their children into some/any kind of education given the lack of other viable options and the fact that everyone else is doing it. Establishing a short civil service and improving schooling (making it less skills-focused) could reduce the incidence of wrong choices by making kids better aware of their abilities and interests. The parents would still need to support their children (e.g. financially), but they would not have to be as paternalistic as far as the actual choice of education is concerned. And by the way, I am sure that older siblings and friends can and do affect young people's choices, too.
Robert, I agree - this is the bad pooling NE that we are facing and there is also another good separating NE which is ideal and in order for that good NE to be achievable certain conditions, such as absence of peer pressure and better economic environment, need to be satisfied. However, the thing is that there might be other equilibria which we are not aware of and I think one has to try to reveal those other equilibria. Of course they will not be perfect. The following is exactly the question: Does making military service mandatory right after school have a potential to lead to a better equilibrium?
You are right, approach proposed by me has many imperfections and its implications are not that clear but I do not think that it would not have any potential for dealing with the problem to some extent. I think it would deal with the pooling problem. For example, you mentioned that some people go to higher education in order to avoid mandatory military service. That is true. I also know many people who do so. They do not need education and in some cases they know this (besides their parents knowing this) but they have to be registered as students in order to "cheat" the state. Now, if one makes higher education mandatory right after school this sort of cheating will no longer work. Thus, from that set of people, only those will continue studying, after military service, who really feel that they need further education. This clearly works in favor of a separating equilibrium.
You also mentioned prestige of education which is, I think, one of the main driving forces which leads to the existing equilibrium. Because I think that education is prestigious and I think that others think that it is prestigious, I send my child to a higher education institution. If I don’t then my child will most likely become one of the margins of society. Going back to “bad” paternalism, the wrong thing about parental decision, in this case, lies in the wrongness of incentives. For example, prestige, as it is defined by many parents, is a wrong incentive. For them, prestige is the fruit of just holding a diploma and does not have much to do with what a person has in its “head”. This kind of interpretation clearly works in favor of pooling equilibrium. Indeed, 17 year old youth do not care about such prestige, they do not realize the existence of such superstitions in the society and they are freer from such restrictions in their thinking. If one sends those young minds straight away to the army where no one has diploma, everyone is subject to same rules, everyone is treated equally and the military discipline is imposed upon them then, I suspect that, after a while they will reinterpret the existing definition of prestige on their own, independent of their parents.
Nice points, thanks
Looking from the different perspective,
Quality of higher education in Georgia might be the key factor encouraging parents to send their children to the universities right after the school. Most of them are sure that despite the skills and intellectual abilities of their sons they will still get the diploma, as nowadays everyone manages to graduate from the universities because of very low rates of exclusion from the study programs. If the universities were a bit tougher about their requirements on quality of students, I am sure exclusion rates would be higher and consequently parents will start realizing that sending their child (who does not have enough passion for studying) to the higher educational institutions will be the waste of resources without getting any "prestige". If the diplomas will be backed up with the real education, than we can fairly say that holding a diploma is really a prestigious thing.
Making requirements in universities stricter will help achieving NE with more efficient resource allocation. Talented students will end up with good education and diplomas that truly prove their abilities, less talented youngsters will not go to the universities knowing that anyway they will get eliminated from the study programs. This second group may choose to go to the military service or they will start exploring other areas of their interest (this might be craftsmanship or daddy will find a place for his son/daughter in his business or they will find something else to do with their life).
Clear example here would be a case of ISET, I am more than sure no one came at ISET to avoid military service, or just to become more prestigious, even if someone did so and managed to survive in a very tight competition, they deserve to be praised and to be in the educated, more prestigious part of the society. If other higher educational institutions could offer the same type of competition, than we would face a completely different picture in the country.
This solution is something viable, although it will take some resources and time until universities manage implement higher standards and train their lecturers and staff accordingly.
Hi,
This is my very first comment here. I decided to write because this is the problem, I think, needs to be refined and fixed.
Firstly, thank you Mekera for arising this, so interesting and debatable issue existing now in Georgia.
I think that I am also a victim of the paternalism that you mentioned in your article, but anyway I am strongly against making military service mandatory, that you pointed out as a feasible way to give 2 years a person to mature and determine his/her favored career or job.
The main argument is that army is not a place where you can think, where you can get more knowledge about different possibilities all over the world or meet the people and get to know with their life experience. So, by taking graduates from high school straightforwardly to army I think that you make their perspective and the way of thinking narrower. Moreover, In the age of 17-19 when a person should study what is freedom and how to think critically , independently and freely by serving him in the army you are limiting his development.
Another reason that is also somehow connected with the first one is a mentality. Mentality in the army is absolutely different from the one that is necessary to become a successful professional, scientist or civil worker. The level of Intelligence and education is quite even low in the best armies in the world and, of course, much lower in Georgian army.
However, I agree that during two years in the army you would probably learn how to survive is the society where you would not expect to get any help. So, from this point of view I would justify your policy.
Shifting up an entry age to the elementary school up to 7 or establishing 0 class, I think is better solution for that problem in this situation. In this case, 19 will be graduation age and a teenager will be much more matured. As you mentioned in the article the greatest negative consequence of so early entrance at the university is low grades, loss of motivation, bad marks and other negative externalities. With the solution I suggest I think we will get rid of this negative results even at school. In each class students will be one more year matured. They would have more interest to study not only school obligatory subjects but also external material for broadening their perspective.
It sounds perhaps radical, but it has some truth in it: pooling equilibrium with positive education level is pareto dominated by a situation without signaling mechanism; i think it is at least partly relevant for Georgia with education system it has currently.
just few comments
1. what do pupils study at schools in the 11th-12th classes:i think that if you look at the program of the latest two years, you will easily mention that it is not a material for the 16-17 years old educated person, but a program like preparation for the national exams. The good thing is that, last two years attendance of lessons is obligatory and is under a strict control. In my time, attending lessons in the 11th class was "out of fashion" and if you attended all 6 lessons a day, that was a rare case- waste of time!..What pupils learn at those years, when they should be thinking mostly about their future profession? They are preparing for national exams, that as Eric already mentioned is a check for knowledge in several prioritized subjects.
2) The system of entering the university:
The student is writing 22 (as i remember) faculties and entering the competition with his/her points from the national exam. How they choose those 30 faculties? If you look at those applications( i have seen few, my classmates'and friends' applications), you will easily mention that pupils do not have a clear decision, where to enter. sometimes the not only the universities but also faculties differ. e.g. 1 is economics and the second may be IT.. What does it mean? the pupil has no idea where he wants to enter. The main thing they care, is TO ENTER...
3) Why students have low performance?
Most of the students think about the diploma and only. In only rare cases the students are differentiated according to their performance and a lack of competition also plays a role. only interest, in most cases is not to fail (Finances still matter)
Paternalism? No and i can name some reasons why:
1. Parents do not matter the child is IT specialist or an economist, they want their children not to stay in the streets and not to become another "bum"..
2. Prestige! Even if one knows his/her child is studying nothing and just wasting time, they are glad, their children are STUDENTS..
3. Self-confidence: "I did everything what i could do for my child!"
What about solutions:
I think that in the 12th class, if no internship, There should be series of lectures at schools, where the specialists from different field will meet the pupils of 11-12th classes and give them a detailed explanation of their responsibilities;
Excursions and the presentations in different organizations could also help the students to make a better choice...
The way of entering the university should be changed. The pupil should show his interest to the faculty and his motivation to study in particular university.
And of course, the studying progress at universities should be tighter and there should be ratings or any king of competition-based activities..
Tornike Kadeishvili participated in a national program that allowed people of his stature to go around the country and talk to high school students about science and the role it plays in today's society and economy. The idea was to encourage students to study hard sciences and math, as opposed to business and international relations.
Heads of large firms -- local and international -- could also go around and do the same.
This is very close to what SMB is proposing.
I just encountered an example of how good it is, for academic productivity, to serve in an army. Here I cite what Ariel Rubinstein said:
"...Even better, volunteer for reserve duty in the Israeli army. These have been my most
fruitful periods of research. 24 hours of time to think, no worries, excellent food,
isolation from the rest of the world -- an ideal situation to get some real work done. In
fact, I typed the first draft of my 1982 paper on bargaining on the typewriter in the office
of the battalion commander in Metulla (on the border between Israel and Lebanon). I
truly believe that academic productivity would improve if all of us would do 21 days of
reserve duty every year."
Giorgi,
Do you want to compare a mental development of Ariel and most of Georgian teenagers? Think about yourself, what about you were thinking when you were 17 and what was your goal?
A nice story, but he did it on his "reservist" service, at the age of 30+. Incidentally, I remember doing a lot of academic reading (not writing) when called to serve in the army during my studies at the Hebrew U. I had with me two boxes of books and other soldiers thought I am crazy. For them the service was an opportunity to take a break from their daily routines, jobs and family.
Giorgi,
Do you want to compare a mental development of Ariel and most of Georgian teenagers? Think about yourself, what about you were thinking when you were 17 and what was your goal?