DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 112 490 EA 007 525

AUTHOR Haggerty, Patrick E.TITLE Productivity in Education. Two Addresses.INSTITUTION Texas Instruments, Inc., Dallas.PUB .DATE Jun 74NOTE 52p.

EDRS PRICE 1110-$0.76 HC-$3.32 Plus PostageDESCRIPTORS *Change Strategies; *Educational Economics;

*Educational Improvement; Educational Research;Educational Technology; Elementary SecondaryEducation; Individualized Instruction; *Productivity;School Industry Relationship; *Student TeacherRatio

ABSTRACTThis booklet consists of two papers delivered by

Patrick Haggerty, chairman of Texas Instruments, Incorporated, on thegeneral topic of productivity in the American educational system. Thefirst paper, "Education, Work, and Productivity," points out thatwhile productivity per man-hour in the private sector of our economyhas been increasing, productivity per man-hour in the educationalsector has decreased markedly as educators continue to push for lowerstudent/teacher ratios. The author suggests that this trend can bereversed by utilizing such technological advances as video cassettesand instructional television networks to extend education beyond theclassroom and improve educational results while increasingstudent/teacher ratios. The second paper, "R 6 D and Productivity inEducation," suggests that improved educational productivity can bestbe achieved by changing from our present teacher-oriented educationalsystem to a student-oriented system. To achieve this shift willrequire an expansion of research and development efforts focusing onstudent-centered education, the author argues. (JG)

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FOREWORD

Education is our most pervasive occupational commit-ment in the United States. In 1972, for example, we hadmore than five million adults in instruction and administra-tion and more than 60 million students, so that over 31%of our total population had made education its principaltime commitment.

As a nation, we spent almost $86 billion in support. ofacademic educational institutions in the school year*1971-72, or about 8% of our Gross National Product. The,sheer scale of commitment of resources alone is sufficientto justify concern about how we may improve productivityin education. And yet, there is every indication that boththe needs and the interests of the American people suggestwe need to enlarge our educational efforts.

If we hope to meet, in any meaningful way, theseenlarged opportunities, we must succeed in improvingproductivity in education so that the resources releasedmay be devoted to these enlarged needs and opportunities..

Both the need to improve productivity and the methodsto accomplish this improvement have been general interestsof mine for many years, and improving productivity in

education has held special interest because of the very largeopportunity it presents.

The two papers making up Productivity in Educationwere presented in 1972 and 1974, respectively. Althoughthere is a limited amount of redundancy, they are suffi-ciently complementary to be much more informative whenread together than either is separately.

Patrick E. Haggerty

Published lune 1974 by Teas Inwuments Incorporated,P.O. Bo\ 5474, Dallas, Texas 75222

33

EDUCATION, WORK, AND PRODUCTIVITY

Address by Patrick E. HaggertyChairman, Texas Instruments Incorporated

for theDallas Independent School District

February 24, 1972

Some months ago at a dinner meeting it was my privilegeto sit beside the wife of an eminent retired universitypresident. This lady and her husband, still possessed ofgreat mental and physical energy, are themselves operatingvery successfully a good-sized farm in the southeasternUnited States. During the course of the evening's discus-sion, this distinguished lady drew upon her experienceswith young people on the farm to argue very convincinglythat these young men and women, growing up, doing usefulwork, and learning as they worked on their own andneighboring farms, neither caused nor faced most of theproblems associated with youth growing up in the city.From these experiences she argued that it was futile to seeksolutions through our city schools and that the rightapproach lay in taking the young people out of the citiesand putting them on the farms to work, to grow, and tolearn. She was startled when I pointed out then, even if shewere right in her premise, following her recommendationcould have no significant impact on youth growing up inthe United States today. The reason, of course, is verysimple. There just aren't very many people left on thefarm, and there are going to be even fewer in anotherdecade.

Most of us who grew up in, or still have connectionswith, rural America know there is much wisdom in myfriend's observations. Unfortunately, the United States haschanged so overwhelmingly to an urban society that onlyurban solutions can meet our needs.

44

I

1 1 u

AGRICULTURE

INDUSTRY

SERVICE

1 '

1990 1930

SOURCE Commitin for Economic Doivelopment

Figure 11

1950 1970

There probably is no clearer way to trace the develop-ment of the United States from an agricultural to anindustrial society and the continuing shift to what some arenow terming a "post-industrial society" than to examinethe changes in how our people are employed (Figure 1).

As recently as 1890, four out of every 10 workers wereengaged in agriculture, forestry, or fisheries. By 1930 thatpercentage had been halved, and in 1970 only 4% of ourworkers produced relatively even more food and forestproducts.

We had 28% of our workers in industry in 1890, andthat percentage grew slowly, reaching 34% in 1950. Sincethen, however, in spite of the increasing quantity andvariety of industrial goods we produce, the percentage ofour total workers in industry declined to 31% in 1970.

The really striking shift is in the category known as"service," which includes transportation, communications,

55

utilities, wholesale and retail trade, government, and educa-tion, in addition to other services. In 1890 only 29% of ourworkers were engaged in service areas. By 1950 this per-centage had nearly doubled, and in 1970 nearly two out ofthree of our workers were so engaged.

The implications of these shifts are profound. They havecome about because the ever-increasing productivity perperson, especially in agriculture and industry, has allowedus to turn our efforts to providing services, particularlyeducation and government.

Productivity per person engaged in agriculture no doubtwill go on increasing at 4% to 6% per year, and in a fewdecades perhaps 2% of our working population will produceall of the agricultural products we need. However, eventhough agriculture goes on increasing in productivity perperson, it can no longer have a very large impact onimproving the standard of living of our society or, to lookat it another way, to free workers now engaged in pro-ducing food for work in government, education, or healthcare.

Increasing productivity per person in industry, too, willmean we require relatively fewer workers to produce theever-increasing quantity of material goods we use to live. Itis highly probable that by the year 2000 we will need only25% of our total workers in agriculture and industry toproduce all of the food and goods we need, and three outof four of all who work will be in services. Thus, whateverthe social and educational values of growing up on thefarm, no matter how diligently we try, we are not likely toexpose very many of our young people to those advantages.Equally clearly, the great preponderance of young peopleyou helip'educate will be working in those same serviceareas rather than on farms or in factories.

Increasing productivity per person, of course, is justanother way of saying that output per hour worked perman has gone up remarkably. Indeed, in the private sectorof our economy, our society now produces about six times

6

as much in each hour worked as it did in 1890, and it is

from this increase in output per man-hour that we haveattained our real improvement in standard of living. Thisability to improve our output per man-hour consistently isprobably the most significant material accomplishment ofcontemporary industrial society.

What has made it possible? Among the principal factorsare:

1. How we organize for work; i.e., how we manage;2. Use of science and technology in multiplying the

effectiveness' with which we work;3. Use of capital, as reflected in machines, took, plants,

and supplies to multiply effectiveness of each indi-vidual working;

4. Economies of scale; i.e., as our country grew and aswe developed markets, we found ways to apply ourtotal efforts more effectively. Larger markets madebigger tools and better technology possible;

5. The consistently improving educational level of thetotal work force, which contributed to the increasingproductivity per person;

6. Most important of all, the nature of the system itself,within which all of these factors can operate toimprove effectiveness. Our private enterprise system isa profit-or-loss system, and every manager within itknows that the total funds he receives for theproducts and services his organization turns out mustexceed his total costs by an amount which is adequateto pay for the investment of the shareholders and toprovide internal growth. Consequently, if wages andsalaries go up, either prices must go up or costs mustcome down, and the competition within the systeminevitably puts a lid on prices.

As a consequence, the private industrial sector is

especially well organized to improve its productivity con-stantly. At Texas Instruments, for example, we know verywell that if wages and salaries go up 5%, either our prices

7

must go up or our costs must go down accordingly. Sincecompetition limits our prices, we spend a very large propor-tion of our total professional effort in improving oureffectivenessin management systems, in new products, innew processes for manufacture, in marketing, in moreeffective tools and machines and layouts, and in trainingpeople. In product lines that encompass about half ourtotal volume we have faced price cuts approximating 15%per year for more than a dec'ade; yet, with wages andsalaries increasing at a rate of 3% to 5% per year, we havemanaged not only to survive but to grow and to profit.

Profits before taxes at Texas- Instruments are runningaround 8%. Of that amount a little less than half is paidout in the form of income taxes. About one-quarter of the4%-plus that remains goes to our shareowners in the formof dividends, and they in turn pay from one-quarter toone-half or more out to governments in the form of incometaxes. The percentag. that remains (presently 3%, butsometimes more, sometimes less, and it really needs to be4% or better) is what has produced most of the necessaryfunds that have allowed us to grow to 400 times the sizewe were in 1946. Thus, it would have taken only a

relatively small decrease in our effectiveness through theyears to put us in a loss instead of a profit position. Thiswould have stopped our growth immediately and, ifcontinued over a few years, would have been cured eitherthrough a change in management or through the death ofthe organization. Thus, we have no alternative to improvingour productivity. It is built into our culture.

But this ability to improve productivity per person at ahigh rate is not automatic, and it is not universal through-out all the endeavors of our society. There is good reasonto feel, for example, that productivity per person employedin education actually has decreased over the past decade ortwo

Since 1930, our population has grown from 123 millionto 205 million, about 60%. During that same span of time,

8

I I

(MILLIONS OF PERSONS,

21/20 : POPO LATION

100

ENROLLMENTM

1930 1940 1950 11190 1970

Figure 2

(1) INCLUDESPUBLIC& PRIVATE

(2) FULL-TIMEEQUIVALENTS

Suwon. NFL WICowman .. 01116.el blaniion. HMV

our school enrollment doubled, from 29.7 million to 59.1million, but the number of full-time equivalent men andwomen employed in education grew more than four times,from 1.3 million in 1930 to 5.4 million in 1970. Thus, inthe last 40 years, the number of full-time employees ineducation has grown twice as fast as the number ofstudents and more than three times as fast as thepopulation (Figure 2).

Expressed in 1970 dollars, between 1930 and 1970 ourtotal expenditures for education for all levels have grownmore than nine times, from $7.5 billion to $70.3 billion.Remember, these are in constant 1970 dollars (Figure 3).

Or what is much more meaningful, again in constant1970 dollars, our expenditures per student have grownnearly five times, from $253 per student in 1930 to $1,188per student in 1970, and the biggest increases have comesince 1950. We now spend nearly three times as much perstudent in constant 1970 dollars as we did in 1950.

9

I I II I

(IN BILLIONS OF 1970 DOLLARS)

ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY El HIGHER ED III

Some Office of Eduootion. HOW

Figure 3

However, these comparisons are not completely fairbecause the number of students in higher education, wherethe costs per student are obviously much higher, has

increased more rapidly than in elementary and secondaryschools. Still, as Figure 4 shows, since 1950, costs forelementary and secondary education grew from $377 to$885 per student, or more than 2-1/3 times, and the costsof higher education increased somewhat more rapidly, from$1,259 per student to $3,152, or 2-1/2 times.

As to the nature of the forces generating these

disparities, let me quote from "The Economics of theMajor Private Universities," a paper by Dr. William G.Bowen, Provost of Princeton University and Professor ofEconomics and Public Affairs, which was published by theCarnegie Commission on Higher Education:

"Let us imagine an economy divided into twosectors, one in which productivity is rising and anotherin which it is constant, the first producing auto-mobiles, and the second, 'education' (defined as some

10,

10

2000

1000

0

ON CONSTANT 1970 DOLLARSI

ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY III HIGHER ED, 0

1259

377

576

2444

885

3152

1950 1960

Source: Office of Education, HEW

Figure 4

1970

amalgam of students and knowledge). Let us supposethat in automobile production output per man-hourincreases at an annual rate of 4 percent, comparedwith a zero rate of increase in the education industry.Now let us assume that money wages in the auto-mobile industry go up at the same rate as productivityin that industry. This means that each year the typicalauto worker's wage goes up by 4 percent, but since hisoutput increases by exactly the same percentage, thelabor cost of manufacturing a car will be unchanged.This process can continue indefinitely, with auto.workers earning more and more each year, with costsper car remaining stationary, and with no rise in

automobile prices necessary to maintain companyprofits.

"But what about the education industry? How itfares in this imaginary economy depends on whatassumption is made about the relationship betweenincreases in faculty salaries (treated, for the sake of

1111

simplicity, as an index of all salaries in the education'industry) and the increases in the wages of autoworkers. Over the long run, it is probably mostreasonable to assume that faculty salaries increase atapproximately the same rate as wages in other sectors.(Between 1948 and 1966, professorial salaries haveincreased slightly faster than earnings of productionworkers in manufacturing-4.8 percent per year for theformer and 4.2 percent for the latter. However, if wetake either 1929 or 1939 as our base year, we findthat faculty salaries have increased somewhat lessrapidly than earnings in manufacturing. It was duringthe World War II period that the relative incomeposition of faculty members deteriorated somarkedly.)

"If the salary of the typical faculty member doesincrease at an annual rate of 4 percent,so that hisliving standard improves along with the living standardof the auto worker, but if output per man-hour in theeducation industry remains constant, it follows thatthe labor cost per unit of educational output mustalso rise 4 percent per year. And there is nothing inthe nature of the situation to prevent educational costper unit of product from rising indefinitely at acompound rate of this sort.

"The particular assumptions included in this analysisare, of course, merely illustrative, and the numericalresults can be changed by assuming i different rate ofproductivity increase and a different rate of increaseof money wages in the non-educational sector, byassuming that faculty salaries increase at a somewhatdifferent rate from money wages in general (eitherfaster or slower), and by allowing for some increase inproductivity in the field of education. But modifica-tions of this kind will not alter the fundamental pointof the argument, which is that in every industry inwhich increases in productivity come more slowly than

1212

in the economy as a whole, cost per unit of productmust be expected to increase relative to costs ingeneral. Any product of this kindwhether it be ahaircut, a custom-prepared meal, a performance of asymphony concert, or the education of a graduate

studentis bound to become ever more expensiverelative to other things."2The pressures Dr. Bowen outlines would apply if the

ratio of students per employee in the education industrywere constant. Since in fact the ratio has been decreasing,and we have been using more employees in the educationindustry to produce the same number of students, a doublecompounding has been taking place.

Do any of you honestly believe, that today's students are,on the average, two to three times better prepared thanthey were just 20 years ago? In fact, do you believe that,

on the average, they are as well prepared, considering thedifficulties and the instabilities of the times? Thus,

whatever the causes, one is forced to conclude that there

has been a marked decrease in productivity per personengaged in education.

Here is a statement much closer to home from anaddress made last March by Dr. Nolan Estes before theEducational Testing Service in Washington, D.C., in whichhe emphasized the need for accountability in education:

"For five yearsever since the passage of the

Elementary and Secondary Education Act gave us theextra financial boost we needed to develop compensa-tory programswe had been trying all the old tricksand most of the new to improve achievement among

those children whom we call the 'culturallydisadvantaged.' Along with other school districts all

over the country, we bought shiny new hardware andclever new software; invested in workshops and

seminars for our teachers; sent our kids to concertsand museums and factories and evencourtesy ofBraniff Internationalup over the city in planes. In

1313

sum, we waved the banner of innovation as energeticallyas anyone.

"Naturally, even though we got a considerable boostfrom Title l and other forms of federal aid, our costswent up. They tripled in the last 10 yearsmainlybecause of new construction, salary increases, andimprovements such as air-conditioning; but partiallybecause we asked the citizens of Dallas to stretchfederal dollars with their own. And when we totaledthe results of this financial exertion on the part of thetaxpayers, and of the spiritual exertion on the part ofour teachers, we found we didn't have much to beproud of.

"Our target had been those schools in ,whichstudents were averaging only a half-year's achievementgain for every full scholastic year. By the time wefinished, we had not managed to improve on this sadrecord; in fact, some of our Title I schools were worseoff in 1970 than they had been in 1965.

"Any sane school superintendent is reluctant tohang out his dirty linen for public viewing. I cannotsuppress a certain sense of embarrassment even now,as I speak. All that gives me courage to do so is theknowledge that virtually every other large city schoolsystem in the country has had the same experience asDallas. Five years and five billion dollars after Title Iwas passed, we still have not learned how to break thecycle of underachievement that sees children frompoor homes do poorly in school; find poor jobs ornone; marryand then send their oviin poor childrento school.

"But though this failure remains constant, somethings have changed in educationnotably the publicattitude toward those who run it. Ten years ago, weeducators confidently asserted that we knew how tocure educational illness. All we needed was enoughmoney to lower pupil-teacher ratios, put a library in

14

14

every school, an overhead projector in every class-room, and so on and so forth. Our prescriptions foreducational excellence were based on traditionalnotions that went unchallenged because a stingy publichad never allowed us to try them.

"During the 1960's, we got a chance to try them;not as much of a chance as we would have liked,perhaps -too many school systems spread Title I fundsaround so thinly that the extra money could not haveany impact. Nevertheless, we were given a reasonablechanceand the results did not justify the investment.And today, it is clear, the public does not believe it isgetting its money's worth from public education."3Indeed, there are a great many signs that reflect the

extent of the dissatisfaction of the taxpayer with publiceducation. Here are some of the consequences reported in aWall Street Journal story in 1971:

Teachers are being laid off for first time since theDepression.New York Board of Education will reduce its teachingand administrative force by 6500 to head off$40-million budget deficit.The' California Teachers Association says that fullyhalf of 1000 school districts in the state have notifiedteachers of possible layoffs in September.In Ohio, only 29% of (school bond) issues wereokayed at the polls last year (1970).In Cincinnati, kindergarten pupils next fall will getonly 10 weeks of instruction instead of present 20,and all elementary school libraries are to be dosed.Layoffs have also been announced in the affluentcommunities of Wilmette, Arlington Heights, and NilesTownship.The number of teacher college graduates is almosttriple the number of new job openings being createdby resignations and retirement.'

1515

That dissatisfaction has been spelled out even moreclearly in taxpayer reactions to bond issue renewals andapprovals which have been the mainstay for financing thecapital needs of schools (Figure 5).

Note that where only one out of four bond issues wasrejected in 1965, in 1970 the number had climbed until itwas almost one out of two.

As Dr. Estes stated, it has been pretty much doctrinethat all that was necessary to solve the problems of theeducation iridustry was sufficient money. It would seem tome that the events of the past 20 years should have

dispelled that illusion completely. After all, spendingapproaching three times as much per student (in constantdollars) does not seem to have improved the effectivenessof the system or the quality of the end productappreciably.

More money will help, but not much, if, the record ofthe past 20 years means anything! Remember Dr. Bowen'sobservations. If the productivity in the rest of the economy

TOTALSUBMITTED

TOTALREJECTED

PERCENTREJECTED

Figure 5

I I

k

1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970

2041 1745 1625 1750 1341 1216

516 480 - 543 567 579 569

25 28 33 32 43 47

Source: Congrassional Record. Jan. 19, 1972, p.E1

16

16

is increasing and that in education'is not, then it will take aconsiderable amount of money per year merely to keep thepay scales of those in the education industry comparable tothose in the rest of society, even though nothing more isbeing produced for the additional funds.

Thus, however unpalatable the realization may be tothose in education, the employees of the educationindustry have been completely dependent for any real gainsin their own incomes these past decades upon the

increasing productivity of the other sectors of theeconomy. Further, unless those engaged in education canincrease the productivity per person annually at a reason-able rate, they are going to go on being dependent for anyincreases in their own real income on the. gains made bythe work of others in those sectors of our economy wherethe productivity is increasing.

There are four vital points that must be made:1 Any questions raised with respect to decreasing

productivity per person within education itself are notabout the advantages of education for all but onlyabout the institutions and the procedureswith howand what and when we have chosen to provide theeducation. Education for all to the maximum ofcapability and desire is a proper objective in thathigher standard of living (expressed in the broadestterms) we seek for the United States.

2. As I mentioned earlier, a portion of the increasingproductivity per person in the private sector is

attributed to the constantly increasing educationallevel of our total population. Thus, to the extent thatthe ,additional costs go to training a larger percentageof the population to a higher level of education, theeducation industry is entitled to a share in theproductivity gains made by t!,e private sector.

3. The problems within the educational system whichhave produced the constantly decreasing productivityare at least as much the fault of society itself as theyare of the educational industry. After all, we outsiders

17

17

make up most of the population, and we elect theschool boards and set the general standards andspecifications of the system within which you operate.It is that same greater society which is responsible forthe turmoil, the problems of race and discrimination,the imposed solutions such as busing, three-monthsummer vacations, and a variety of other limitations,strictures or frictions which both create the systemwithin, which education operates and interfere with itsoperating effectively, even within that system.

4. This unhappy state of affairs is not ,because theprofessionals in the education industry are less able ormore venal than the rest of us. On the contrary, I

suspect that the average professional in educationworks as hard, is at least as well trained, and ifanything, more dedicated, than those of us whooperate in the areas where productivity has beenimproving.

But, nevertheless, there is a striking difference betweenthe educational system and private enterprise. The differ-ence is in the different cultures of which we are each apart. The kinds of products and services we produce andsell in industry lend themselves to measurement, to pricing;and the system requires that we improve productivity ordie. As a consequence, every product or service decisioninvolves a dichotomy; the nature, the quality, the specifica-tions of the product or service itself, and always its cost.When the market decides what combination of quality orproduct or service and cost it prefers, as often as not thedecision is in favor of a little less product or service forquite a lot less cost. On the other hand, all of us also comefrom or still are a part of a school culture that equates areduced adult-to-student ratio in the school system as theprimary route to improved education. Indeed, within thepresent system, it is difficult to conclude otherwise.

Included in the Dallas Independent School DistrictOperations Goals for 1972-73 are the statements shownin Figure 6.

18

18

tm94,1,1.

PROVIDE SUFFICIENT PARA- PROFESSIONALS TO ASSISTINSTRUCTIONAL PERSONNEL IN INDIVIDUALIZINGINSTRUCTION. (PROBABLY REDUCING THE EMPLOYED.ADULT TO PUPIL RATIO TO 1 : 18 IN AREAS I, II AND HI)

2.2 PROVIDE EMPLOYED ADULT TO PUPIL RATIO OF 1 : 15

IN AREA IV

Sevres: ...Operation, Goals, 197273,Dallas I nriiipandant School District

Figure 6

Since the ratio for the district for 1971-72 was 19.5, itis clear that the trend must be inevitably toward increasingcosts, an increase undoubtedly contemplated in order toimprove the quality of instruction. 1 do not believe,however, that this possibly can be the long-range solutionunless the decrease in adult-student ratio is accompanied bya decrease in the total hours per student per year. Therecan be no escape from the constantly escalating costs, ifthe only solution is the expenditure of more and moreman-hours of adult instructional and administrative timeper student hour.

In spite of these criticisms, I applaud the existence ofthese Operation Goals and the thoughtful consideration ofproblems and opportunities they present. Indeed, it is

exactly the kind of clear statement of goals that is a

necessary prelude to approaches that will generate anincreasing productivity. But somehow the goals have tochange to find ways that maintain the quality of educationwith fewer adult hours per student hour.

Clearly, this cannot be a short-term solution, and underpresent circumstances there is nothing wrong, with the

1972-1973 goals of the Dallas Independent School Districtas expressed. But unless there are active and energeticexperimental efforts which have exactly the opposite goal;

1919

i.e., equally effective education with fewer adult hours,there is no way out of the trap in which all are caught. Theconcept of productivity is just as valid in education as it isin the production of goods or food. The problem ofmeasurement is much more severe, but the fact is that wehave standards in education now which relate to accom-plishment, however imperfect they may be, and most of usprofessionally engaged in any kind of activity can judgesubjectively whether we are accomplishing more or less orabout the same as we were last year or the year before, andthat subjective judgment can be the basis of improvedstandards of measurement. Improving productivity ineducation is a difficult task, but not an impossible one,provided that the total systematic culture within which it isconducted recognizes the absolute need for steadilyincreasing productivity per employee engaged, if the goalsof education itself are not to be aborted, and if those whospend their lives in the profession are to continue to beable to look forward to gradual improvement in their ownstandards of living and to deserve that improvement.

Most of the discussion thus far has been discouraging.Indeed, Dr. Bowen, in the remainder of the paperpreviously referenced, substantially concludes that educa-tional costs will go on increasing relative to the rest ofsociety, simply because productivity can't be improved atan adequate rate.

Frankly, I cannot agree with that conclusion. It is

inconceivable to me that if we really want to, if we applythe multitude of talents we possess as a society, if youapply the enormous skills all of you possess who make upthe profession of education, we cannot get 2% to 5% morework done each year than we did the yeir before. That isall it takes: 3% more productivity per person per yearwould keep up with the rest of society in general; 5% moreproductivity per person per year would generate a lead overthe remainder of society and produce some surplus fundswhich, in turn, could be used to improve the quality ofeducation itself without increasing real costs.

2020

Further, as difficult as the challenge may be, there are

also signs that the times are propitious for a change.

For one, we aren't going to feel the tremendous

pressures engendered by an ever-increasing volume ofstudents in most of our school systems (Figure 7).

The Office of Health, Education and Welfare forecasts

that there will be 34.2 million students in elementary

80

60

40

20

59.2

I 1 I I

I I 1:1

(MILLIONS OF PERSONS)

61,4

HIGHER EDUCATION

HIGH SCHOOL

ELEMENTARY

1970 1980

Source Officio of Education, HEW

Figure 7

school in 1980, down from 36.9 million in 1970, a

decrease of about 7%. Further, high school enrollment will

remain relatively level over the decade. Only in the area of

Higher education will there be any significant increase, but

even though the increase in students participating in higher

education is forecast to grow by 55% (from 7.9 million in1970 to 12.2 million in 1980), that still is nothing like therelative increase we had to face from 1960 to 1970, when

there was more than a doubling of students in higher

education.**Revised figures for 1980 School Enrollment, as reported in HEW's 1972

edition of Projections of Educational Statistics to 1981 -82, indicate that

the decrease in elementary school students will be 8% rather than 7%, and

the increase in higher education students will be 50% rather than 55%.

21 21

Thus, we can cease the mad scramble to provide facilitiesand train pedfple to keep up just barely with the growthand demand, and now we can divert time and effort toimprove both quality and productivity.

Further, there are new tools available around which newsystems of education can be built, and I stress new systemsof education. Most attempts to use television or computerssimply have grafted them on the old system and with littleor no consciousness of cost and productivity. As a con-sequence, while there are any number of experiments whichsuggest that enormous gains can be made with these newtools, the actual impact on the educational structure todate is insignificant. Dr. Alvin Eurich in his book,Reforming American Education,5 cites numerous examplesof this kind of experience and points out opportunities fortrue reform.

For example, the MIT Sloan School of Managementreported in January 1970 that using a system of computer-assisted programmed learning, "A body of material whichusually takes a Sloan student an average of 18 hours tomaster was absorbed by the 30 in an average of one. Onestudent was able to do it in exactly 36 minutes. As a result,the systemthe Associated Learning Project, or ALPwillsoon become the standard teaching device for 150 Sloanmaster's students in at least one course."6

Alpert and Bitzer of the University of Illinois, in a recentarticle in Science magazine, describe a computer-basededucation system developed from the first with the conceptof both educational quality and economics in mind. Theystate:

"A single Plato IV (an acronym for the computer-based educational system described) system operating10 hours a day could provide approximately 10 millionstudent-contact hours annually at a cost of about $3to $4 million (with a total capital investment ofapproximately $12 million). This is equivalent to thetotal annual number of hours of instruction at a4-year u n der-grad tote institution with 24,000

2222

students! Such an institution would typically havedirect instructional expenses of well over $20 millionannually and, in a university setting, a total budgetseveral times greater. This comparison is obviously notmeant to suggest that Plato could be substituted forsuch an institution. Rather, it is intended to indicatethat a single Plato IV system could augment by 20percent the instructional capacity of five such institu-tions on an annual budget of less than $1 millioneach."But even more important than these kinds of new tools,

we need to ask ourselves if the kind of education we areproviding now is right for all of the more than 14 millionteenagers who are presently in high school.

According to the U.S. Office of Education, well over60% of this year's high school graduates will enter college;in, another 10 years, the figure probably will be 70%. Nowwe have eight million in colleges and universities; assumingpresent trends, in another 10 years we'll have 12 million. Isthe only route to a college-level education to continue tobe cooping up 12 million of our young people in theclassrooms and relatively artificial atmosphere of school forso much of their lives? Mightn't it be wiser if, beginning at15 or 16, those who wished could go to work for four tosix hours a day and attend classes via television in class-rooms at their work alone or with small groups of fellowworkers for two hours or more a day? It isn't necessarily.true that the number of hours it would take to conclude,first, high school and then college would be lengthenedproportionately.

We all know that when learning is related to an end inwhich we are vitally interested or the necessary step ingetting to do what we want to do, we learn at a muchhigher rate than when it is just a .packaged something weneed to know as a step toward a diploma or degree. I

remember vividly just a few years ago learning by corre-spondence celestial navigation in a total of 25 or 30 hoursspread over about six weeks and doing most of the

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studying and problem working while riding on airplanes,supplemented by a few hours at night before going to bed.I learned celestial navigation because I wanted to race asmall boat across the Atlantic, and I worked my first nightunderway on the deck of my sloop after leaving Newport.Obviously, celestial navigation is not all that difficult, but Ilearned it much more quickly than subject matter ofequivalent difficulty in my college years. Similarly, as ayoungster in high school, building shortwave receivers andtransmitters and getting my amateur radio operator'slicense, I learned a lot of electronics relatively much morereadily than I did later in formal classes. Couldn't thecombination of work and study be more effective or atleast just as effective as stereotyped classroom teaching formillions of young men and women?

As many of you already know, in the North Texasregion we have a closed circuit TV network with talk-backcapabilities coupling nine universities and colleges and 46classrooms in seven industrial organizations in a complex ofnine locations around Dallas, Fort Worth and Sherman,Texas. The Tager TV network opened in September 1967and presently is in its fifth year of operation. This spring atotal of 70 graduate and undergraduate-level courses in

business, engineering, science, and mathematics are beingoffered to a course enrollment of approximately twothousand. At Texas Instruments alone, we have 243enrolled in programs, most working toward master'sdegrees. This is out of a total professional TI population inthe Dallas area of over 4,500 of whom about 1,200 alreadyhave master's or doctorates. The program is already anoverwhelming success; yet, we have not designed an

educational system based on TV. We really just have aug-mented the present educational system geographically.Although there is some influence on the graduate-levelsubject matter by the individual organizations, in general,the schools are establishing the curricula and the industrialorganizations are fUrnishing the classrooms, the students,and most of the funds.

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Further, for all my emphasis in the earlier part of thisdiscussion on the necessity for considering cost, and

although costs of courses were considered in establishingthe network, it was not designed with specific costs perstudent-hour goals in mind. Actu..11y, the cost per student-i nstru ctional-houi- is about comparable with normaluniversity costs for the same kind of course. However, theconvenience of the classroom locations and the schedulingof classes throughout the working day and evening ensurethat many more professional people in the participatingcompanies go on to postgraduate degrees and that the costto the companies in lost working hours is markedlyreduced.

The opportunities for really significant improvement incourse applicability and quality are enormous, and thepotential for producing this kind of improved educationalopportunity at a striking decrease in cost is extraordinary.The system as presently constituted never has been

designed or operated to achieve the really low cost perstudent-instructional-hour of which it is capable. Thus,because we really just have augmented the present systemrafTer than designed ,a new system of education using thesenew tools and concepts, we still are not producing anythinglike the results that are potential. I am convinced that thedevelopment of a true television-based educational systemfor the kind of education that the people at suchcompanies as Texas Instruments both desire and need allthe way from high school through the Ph.D. and beyondinto continued adult education can produce both a qualityof education and productivity per educator far above thataccepted as the norm in the high school or university, andfurther, that the system can be self-supporting.

It seems to me that the principal problems in our educa-tional system are related to a misguided effort to use whatwas fundamentally an elitist system of higher education forcarrying everyone through high school and a majority ofthose who graduate from high school on into college. This,I think, is a fundamental error. As a consequence, the

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system is not well designed to satisfy the needs of mostattending. A majority of the students finishing high schooland going on into college, whatever their point of termina-tion, is not really well prepared for a career. Indeed, manyof these young men and women would have been betterprepared had they simply gone to work somewhere in theirlate teens. The process has proceeded to the point where,whether appropriate or not, at least two years in collegeand often a college degree are the required ticket ofadmission to career opportunities of any consequence.

Should we abandon our attempts to educate all of ouryoung people to the maximum of their ability? No, but wedo need to change radically the methods we are using.

I am well aware that many, if not most, of you feel thesame way; indeed, the Dallas Independent School Districthas been moving toward augmented career education at a

rapid pace with the Skyline Career Development Center asone tangible accomplishment.

But I suggest that even the DISD's enlightened approachis not enough and that we need a radical revision in theinstitutional approaches we use to provide broader educa-tion to massive groups of people. I believe that our limitedexperience in Dallas, substituting TV in plants and officesfor classrooms in universities, sq,6..isi_s that, for moststudents, required in-school classroom attendance couldterminate after the 10th year. Thereafter, the broadereducation requirement for these students would be fulfilledin close connection with their jobs and at their places ofwork through highly flexible programs, using'TV cassettesas well as TV classrooms, operated as adjuncts to liveclassrooms and as completely open-ended as possible sothat one could continue working through any requisitenumber of years to attain various diploma levels from highschool up. The course content quite properly should be setto augment the career being pursued and with the collabo-ration of the organization at which the individual is

working, but the diplomas still would be granted by the

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appropriate degree-granting institutions, such as the DallasIndependent School District for the high-school diploma.

Since the individuals concerned would be working ininstitutions, both business and non-business, and sinceanyone who wanted to do so could proceed as far,diploma-wise, as his competence and desire led him, itwould remove a large part of the status-based socialcompulsion to complete, first, high school and then collegein order to "belong," to be "eligible" for a suitable career.Actually, most vocational courses appropriate to the workdone probably could be given more effectively and in amore applicable and timely fashion this way than thepresent system allows. This is at least as true for college-level vocational training, such as cost accounting or tax law,as it is for study we customarily think of as being at thetrade school level, such as machine shopwork or officeprocedures.

One thing that definitely bothers me, for example, isthat, even in industry, the road to anywhere near the topfrom the shop is becoming more and more difficult totraverse. The present mechanisms ensure that such a largepercentage of- those likely to succeed in management willhave gone to college that, in general, enough collegegraduates will be put in the very lowest kind of supervisorypositions to acquire experience, and some of them willproceed from there to the top. If the kind of open-endededucational process described could be established, thenpresumably a fairly sizable number with adequate abilitywould start in shop jobs while comparatively young,acquire their college educations or equivalents along theway via a combination of experience and the organized butnonresidential kind of programs suggested, and, once again,there truly could be people who progress from the shop tothe topand be much better prepared in addition.

On the basis of our training experience at Texas

Instruments, there simply is no doubt that a carefullyprepared instructional program on TV cassettes, plus the

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requisite supplementary written materials for reference andtesting, plus occasional tutorial help, is superior to con-ventional classroom teaching. It does have to be well done,and the student must want to learn; but those are requisitesfor any successful program of education.

A completely new system of career education, designedand supervised both by professionals in education and bythose who employ the students and graduates of the neweducational system, based on a combination of such care-fully prepared TV cassette programs, plus TV classroomsoperated in conjunction with live classrooms, would allowgood teachers to reach many more students than they nowdo and break the present self-defeating emphasis ondecreasing teacher-student ratios.

Indeed, as we all know, adequate preparation for a careerin today's complex society is a process that needs tocontinue throughout one's working life. There is noconceivable way that packing all formal education intoone's early life, terminating it with a diploma, whatever thelevel, in the Teens or early Twenties, and then going towork, possibly can be the best way of career preparationand development. Surely, the kind of new educationalsystem described, in which many fellow workers of varyingage and experience are continuing their formal education insuch a visible, convenient, part-of-the-working-environmentway, would induce a similar interest in a larger proportionof all of us who work. A properly structured curriculumwould ensure that, in addition to career-oriented studies, a

suitable proportion of cultural and social courses would beavailable as well. Surely, this kind of educational systemnot only would enhance the productivity of the educationalsystem itself but that of the entire society, in addition toenriching the individual.

The Federal Government at the present time issupporting financially a wide variety of experimentalprograms. In Dallas we already have the beginnings of a TVnetwork, top-notch approaches to career-oriented education

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in the Dallas schools through a business-education partner-ship, an aggressive junior college program, and a number ofgood colleges and universities. Most of them already arecooperating in the graduate-level educational programsconducted over the TAGER TV network.

Wouldn't it be worthwhile' to take advantage of these'-very strengths here in Dallas to propose to the FederalOffice of Education or to the National Science Foundationan experimental career education program, concluding mostformal classroom attendance after the 10th grade andworking out an open-ended cooperative program withindustry, banks, retail stores, hospitals, and a variety ofother non - business institutions, which would allow studentsthereafter to continue in an organized, but highly flexibleand open-ended program, first, toward a high schooldiploma and then toward the bachelor's degree and post-graduate levels for those who desire?

Obviously, there are problems. State laws now make itdifficult to-employ anyone under 18 years of age. It wouldbe a mistake for wage rates to be too high, because if theyare, the student will be called upon to produce too muchfor his age and experience. But if we can make somethinglike this work, we will be adding producing workers to thesystem years earlier than otherwise, instead of requiringthat they be carried as overhead, coupling the training theyreceive to the work they are doing and reintroducing youngmen and women into real life work and living situationsinstead of isolating them in classrooms.

Some will fear that adding these young people to thework force earlier will magnify the unemployment problem.Given the necessary time to evolve the system, I have no

concerns at all on this score. In fact, not all, but theoverwhelming majority, of unemployed are,either unskilledor in the very same age groups that our present education-work interface almost ensures will produce the kind ofdifficulties we experience in putting these same youngpeople to work. The truth is that the needs of this society

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are such that we can use the efforts of all who want towork and, given ,time, the frictions and imperfections willbe corrected sufficiently to absorb in useful work theadditional hours this kind of educational system wouldmake available.

Even though the eventual costs per student-instructional-hour hopefully would be appreciably lower, there stillwould be complexities in how to divide the payment forthose costs among the public, the organization for whomthe individual is working, and the student himself. Veryprobably, during the early years of education involved, atleast through high school and perhaps through the first twoyears of college-level work, the principal burden should be,just as it is now, borne by the general public throughtaxation. As the level of education rises, the percentage ofthe burden borne by the institution for which theindividual is working and by the individual himself shouldincrease.

In our present educational TV network, for example, TIhas furnished the classrooms and our own part of thenetwork completely at our own cost. The institutioninvolved collects its usual fee for an hour of instructionfrom the student, and we repay 90% of these tuition coststo the individual for all courses completed with passinggrades. In addition, we have made supplementary contri-butions to t he educational institutions involved tocompensate in part for the difference in their costs andtuition charges. Some of the .class time falls during ournormal working hours, and so long as the student's partici-pation has been approved, he is paid for those hours. Ofcourse, all present students are participating at the post-graduate level, and the existence of the program both helpsus attract good professionals to our staff and improves theircompetence after they join us. I use this merely to illus-trate that where there is an advantage to the employingorganization, it usually will be willing to pay for its fairportion of the educational costs. I am confident that,

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whatever the complexities, so long as the system is designedto predetermined student-instructional-hour costs and is

based on an adequate and improving level of productivityper instructional or overhead person involved, the endresult will be a lower cost per student-instructional-hourand a superior education, and we will have less difficultyfinancing it than we do our present system.

In a way, this would be doing what my friend at thedinner wanted to do when she suggested that our educa-tional problems would be solved to a great extent if ouryoung people could go back on the farms to work andlearn, but it would be an urban solution to education foran urban society.

A consortium of involved institutions would be required,but leadership from the Dallas Independent School Districtis perhaps the prime element. I believe that a carefullyconstructed proposal of this kind led by the DISD wouldreceive support from the community itself and excite thekind of interest at the Federal level that would ensure thenecessary initial additional funding. The problems of thetimes demand bold approaches. What about it, Dr. Estes?

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EDUCATION, WORK, AND PRODUCTIVITY

References

1. Economic Growth in the United States. New York:Committee for Economic Development, October 1969.

2. Bowen, William G., The Economics of the Major PrivateUniversities. Berkeley: Carnegie Commission, 1968.

3. Estes, Dr. Nolan, "Their Lives and Our Careers." Anaddress before the Educational Testing Service,Washington, D.C., March 21, 1971.

4. Wall Street journal, March 8, 1971.5. Eurich, Alvin E., Reforming American Education: "The

Innovative Approach to Improving our Schools andColleges." New York: Harper & Row, 1969.

6. Zan netos, Zenon, "Computer Assisted Learning."Cambridge: MIT Reports on Research, January 1970.

7. Alpert, D. and D.L. Bitzer, "Advances in ComputerBased Education." Science, Vol. 167, No. 3925 (20March 1970), pp. 1589-90.

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R&D AND PRODUCTIVITY IN EDUCATION

Address by Patrick E. HaggertyChairman, Texas Instruments Incorporated

for theAmerican Educational Research Association

April 18, 1974

Most of us tend to associate the impact of higherproductivities per person with the ability of the consumerto purchase more goods for relatively less money while, atthe same time, the worker producing the goods truly canearn more. These are important consequences, but of atleast equal significance has been the freeing of resourcespreviously required for the production of food and othermaterial goods so that they might be applied to improvinghealth care or education or other desired services.

As recently as 200 years ago, 90% or more of anycommunity had to be engaged in producing food. This leftonly a handful of men and women to be governors,craftsmen, merchants, scholars, artists, teachers, doctors.

Here in the United States in 1890 we still had anestimated 9.4 million people in agriculture to produce thefood and the other raw agricultural products needed by apopulation of 63 million. Yet, in 1972, only 3.3 millionworkers were required to produce agricultural products fora population of 209 million. Had we been produc'ing in1972 as we were in 1890, it would have taken 41.6 millionworkers to produce the quantity of agricultural productsconsumed and exported in 1972. Thus, more than38 million workers were released to man our factories andproduce our industrial goods, but especially to move intothe service areas, including health, government, and

education,(Figure 1).In 1890, we had only about 500,000 workers in educa-

tion, so there were, 19 times as many workers in agriculture

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CTIVITTGAINS'IttAGRICULTURERA

AGRICULTURE

111 EDUCATION

$90

0.5

Figure 1 lab

38.3 MILLIONPERSONSAVAILABLE FORNON-AGRICULTUREOCCUPATIONS

10M

as in education. Since we had 5.1 million adults in educa-tion in 1972,* in a very real sense, more than 4.5 millionof the workers released because of the increasing produc-tivity in agriculture were released to go into education, andin 1972 there were more than 1.5 times as many workersin education as there were in all of agriculture.

As contrasted with the gains in agriculture and industry,there is every reason to believe that, in the overall, produc-tivity per person in education has decreased.

Our expenditures per student have gone in constant1971-72 dollars from $481 per student in 1951-52 to$1421 in 1971-72, Therefore, in 1971-72 we spent nearlythree times more per student in constant dollars than wedid 20 years earlier (Figure 2).

All of us know, of course, that it is extraordinarilydifficult to measure productivity in education with anyaccuracy and that this comparison of cost changes perstudent with time is an oversimplification. But I don't

*Includes all full-time equivalent personnel employed in academiceducation. The total employed in all education, both academic andnon-academic, was 5.7 million.lc

3434

Figure 22

think there is anyone in the field who believes that produc-tivity per adult engaged in education is anything like threetimes what it was in the early Fifties. Since that is whathas happened to costs per student, the necessary conclusionfollows that productivity per person in education hasdecreased.

In 1890, or probably even 30 or 40 years after that,when the total number of adults engaged in education wasrelatively small, the fact that productivity in education wasnot increasing was not terribly important. In a very realsense, the productivity gains in agriculture and industrywere so large, and the number of workers in them so manyby comparison to the few in education, that the men andwomen in industry and agriculture literally could carry ontheir backs the added costs to society occasioned by thefailure to increase productivity in education. In terms ofthe total resources of society, the extra burden simplywasn't significant. That is no longer true. The nearly

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$86 billion we spent in support of regular educationalinstitutions in school year 1971-72 represents nearly 8% ofour Gross National Product, and the 5.1 million adults ineducation were 6% of our total working population. It maybe unpalatable to those in education, but they have beendependent for any real gains in their own pay upon theincreasing productivity of the other sectors of theeconomy, and only to the extent that education hascontributed to that increasing productivity have those whomake their living in education earned their increasedcompensation.

Nor does this tell the whole story. In 1951, the UnitedStates had a total population of 156 million. There wereover 1,800,000 adults in instructional administration andapproaching 37 million students enrolled in regular publicand non-public institutions from kindergarten through post-graduate in that school year. This means that in that schoolyear, 1951-52, just under 25% of our total population hadmade education their major time commitment. By 1972,with more than 5 .million adults and 60 million students,over 31% of our total population were so committed. Notonly are its high purposes still of overriding importance toboth our cultural and material development, but educationhas become so pervasiveindeed, the major commitment ofnearly a third of our peoplethat it is imperative we learnhow to improve the overall productivity of our totaleducational establishment.

This observation is hardly very novel. It has been madeby many, both inside and outside of education, over thepast decade. Most who doubt that it will be possible toimprove the productivity per person in education at anykind of adequate rate usually do so because of their con-viction that there is no substitute in education for a lowstudent/adult ratio, and hence no way out of the ever-increasing costs with educational wages inevitably pressedup by the increases in the rest of society.

Similarly, many who press for improving productivity perperson build their hopes for such achievement on the

3636

potential availability of such new tools as television andcomputer-aided instruction, and they urge the organiza-tional and institutional changes they see as necessary beforesuch new tools can become effective.

I am personally certain that those who doubt our abilityto improve productivity per person in education signifi-cantly are wrong, but I am about equally convinced thatthose who are confident that all that is required is wide-spread adoption of these new tools are also wrong.

Rindamentally, I believe the problem is a cultural one.The attitudes requisite to constantly improving productivityper person must be built into the culture in which theindividuals work. Those who are responsible must approach-their responsibilities in a way that takes for granted thatmore resources, either for their work or as personalfinancial rewards for doing it, can come only because moreis accomplished per person this year than last year and thatnext year still more per person must be done.

Every long-lasting institution evolves a culture of its own,and Texas Instruments, the organization to which I have

devoted most of my professional life, is no exception. Ourculture is determined by our policies, procedures, andpractices as they are formally stated and installed as

systems and as they actually are perceived and executed bythe individuals who make up Texas Instruments. Thesepolicies, procedures, and practicesand the culture theyproduceare aimed at creating, making, and marketingproducts and services to satisfy the needs of our customersaround the world and are keyed to the incentive providedby the profits we make.

The system forces us to recognize increasing costs, eitherby increasing prices or improving productivity per person,or both. Competition on a worldwide basis severely limitsour ability to increase prices. In fact, in sectors of ourbusiness totaling about half our annual volume, we havehad average price decreases over the past two decades ofabout 15% per year. We have been forced to learn how touse science and technology, capital and management, to

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improve our productivities per person and reduce ouroverall costs.

The relatively automatic operation of the marketeconomy creates a culture common to all private enterprise,a culture that is dependent upon and oriented toward theneed to provide products and services for customers at a

profit. It is a culture in the full sense of the word, one thatautomatically biases the entire sector toward high andincreasing productivities per person, and it does not exist inthe not-for-profit sector.

I have not used this illustration as a pitch for ourmixed-market economy or to suggest that our educationalsystem should be in the profit sector, although I do think a_very considerable part of it could be and would operate inan improved fashion if it were. What I am trying to conveyis that, just as the market and its profit system auto-matically generate a culture biased toward constantlyincreasing productivities per person, so also some equallyeffective change in educational culture will have to begenerated if it, too, is to become biased toward constantlyincreasing productivities per person. No simple addition oftools and technology will accomplish this shift. Those whobelieve so are being fooled by the apparent ease with whichtools and technology accomplish improvements in produc-tivity in the private, profit-making sector, where thecultural bias of the system seeks them out, and there is a

constant and pervasive pressure toward increasing produc-tivities per person.

Within education, on the other hand, the culture imposesa bias in exactly the opposite direction. To oversimplifyonly a little, our entire educational system is a complex ofteachers, each surrounded by a small circleand the smallerthe betterof students to whom the teacher is impartinghis or her knowledge of the specific subject matter of the

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course, plus a considerable addition of general wisdom. Theadministrative structure is tolerated as a necessary nuisanceto support the complex of the small teacher-centeredcircles. Thus, even though teachers have long recognizedthat every student is an individual, the overall culture andthe system it engenders are teacher-centered.

The cultural bias in education toward ever-decreasingstudent/adult ratios has been just as effective in its way ashas the opposite bias toward ever-increasing productivitiesper person in the market sector. Note the upper curveshowing the ratio from kindergarten through eighth grade,with the ratio decreasing from 30.7 in 1951-52 to 21.7 in1961-62, down to 18.2 in 1971-72. Further, HEWprojects a still lower ratio of 16.2 in 1981-82.

Similarly, for the high school years, the ratio has

decreased from 14.9 in 1951-52 to 10.5 in 1961-62, 9.7in 1971-72, and is projected to go on down to 9.4 in1981-82 (Figure 3).

KINDERGARTEN THROUGH 8TH GRADE

10

9TH THROUGH 12TH GRADE

1951-52 1961-62 1971-72 1981-82

Figure 33

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Figure 4

As another very specific illustration, Figure 4 shows astatement from the Operations Goals for 1972-73 of theDallas Independent School District.

Since the ratio of pupils to adults for the year 1971-72was 19.5, the trend is clearly toward increasing costs anddecreasing productivity per person. The superintendent ofthe Dallas Independent School District is Dr. Nolan Estes, aman for whom I have enormous respect. He has to be oneof the most competent school superintendents in the entirenation, dedicated, innovative, and energetic. I have greatconfidence in his judgment, and I have no doubt what-soever that that goal is there because Dr. Estes and theadministrators and the teachers who shared with him theresponsibility for setting it believe firmly that a reducedstudent/adult ratio is essential to improve the effectivenessof education fdr the student. Nor do I doubt that they areright, so long as we operate within a cultural system that isfundamentally teacher-centered.

Thus, the teacher-centered culture is very pervasive in itsbias toward decreasing student/adult ratios, and so long asthe primary mechanism for attaining educational objectives

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is seen as ever lower ratios, the culture must retain the bias,and additions of tools and technology are likely to beperipheral at best in their impact. If, indeed, this teacher-centering is the only effective way to achieve educationalgoals, then it is going to be extraordinarily difficult toattain the increased productivities per person which seemessential if the total resources required are not to becomeastronomical.

Some of our most able and dedicated educators trulybelieve that education is caught on the horns of a dilemmawith the only route to fulfillment of adequate educationalgoals blocked by the need for constantly increasingresources and society's ability and willingness to providethem. I do not believe this pessimism is justified, and I

think one can see a different culture developing in educa-tion which need not include this bias toward ever-decreasing student/adult ratios and which by its very natureis susceptible to adding the concepts required if constantlyincreasing productivities are to be attained.

This different culture, which I would describe as student-centered instead of teacher-centered, is not something newand foreign to the field of education. It goes back at leastto 1919 and the Winnetka, Illinois, plan with self-pacingand mastery demonstration as principles of instruction.Self-pacing and required demonstration of mastery ofsubject matter before proceeding to the next unit of studyare being used at an increasing rate in teaching college-levelscience. Kulik, Kulik, and Carmichael discuss a number ofsuch programs and their apparent effectiveness in theFebruary 1, 1974, issue of Science.4

At the elementary school level, the University ofPittsburgh's Learning Research and Development Centerbelieves that one of its significant research results is what itcalls Individually Prescribed Instruction. IPI stresses as itsmajor objective the ability of each student to work at hisown rate through units of study in a learning sequence andthe development in each student of a demonstrable degreeof mastery flowing from self-paced and self-directed effort.

4141

Research for Better Schools, Inc., in Philadelphia hascollaborated with the Learning Research and DevelopmentCenter to involve nearly 90,000 elementary school childrenin one or'more of these IPI programs.

Another effort at the elementary school level is

Individually-Guided Education (IGE) in a model developedby the Wisconsin Research and Development Center forCognitive Learning with the Institute for the Developmentof Educational Activities (IDEA) also contributing. In thiscurrent school year, there are about 1700 elementaryschools in 37 states using this IGE model. Since there wereonly seven such schools,. all in Wisconsin, as recently as1967-68, this cultural shift to student-centering is clearlygrowing at a high rate.

These illustrations are just some of the efforts aroundthe nation to shift from teacher-centering to student-centering.

One of the most stimulating and challenging discussionsof individually paced, mastery-oriented teaching is FredKeller's 1967 presidential address to the AmericanPsychological Association, that he called "Good-bye,Teacher." In his address, Dr. Keller summarized the follow-ing features of this teaching method he felt distinguished itmost clearly from conventional teaching procedures:

"1. The go-at-your-own pace feature, which permits astudent to move through the course at a speedcommensurate with his ability and other demandsupon his time;

"2. The unit-perfection requirement for advance, whichlets the student go ahead to new material only afterdemonstrating mastery of that which preceded;

"3. The use of lectures and demonstrations as vehiclesof motivation, rather than sources of criticalinformation;

"4. The related stress upon the written word in teacher-student communication; and finally;

"5. The use of proctors, which permits repeated testing,immediate scoring, almost unavoidable tutoring, and

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a marked enhancement of the personal-social aspectof the educational prOtess."5

Earlier, I identified this new educational culture asstudent-centered. In his address, Dr. Keller describes thedifference between teacher-centering and student-centering:

"In systems like these, and in the one I have

centered on, the work of a teacher is at variance withthat which has predominated in our time. His publicappearances as classroom entertainer, expositor, critic,and debater, no longer seem important. His principaljob, as Frank Finger (1962) once defined it, is truly`the facilitation of learning in others.' He becomes aneducational engineer, a contingency manager, with theresponsibility of serving the great majority, rather thanthe small minority, of young men and women whocome to him for schooling in the area of his

competence."6I would like to emphasize that, while the shift from

teacher-centering to student-centering is indeed a completecultural shift, it does not automatically provide theemphasis on increasing productivity per adult that seems anecessity.

Indeed, although there does seem to be considerableevidence that results with students are suj,-rior, many ofthe IPI and IGE programs are at least as prodigal in the useof adult manpower as any teacher-centered program. Onthe other hand, in a student-centered culture, adding therequirement for constantly increasing productivity per adultdoes not generate any conflict in fundamental purpose as itinevitably does within the teacher-centered culture.

The Wisconsin R&D Center's multi-unit school modelillustrates, what I mean. There, the traditional, self-contained classrooms are replaced with larger, non-gradedunits. In each unit a unit teacher, two or three staffteachers, a first-year teacher, a teacher aide, an instructionalsecretary, and an intern work with 100 to 150 students ina three to four-year age span. Unit leaders and buildingprincipal make up an instructional improvement committee

4343

and cooperatively define the school's educational goals. Atthe district level, a system-wide policy committeewhichincludes central office administrators and consultants,principals, and representative unit leaders and teachersdevelops policy guidelines and coordinates the use ofhuman and physical resources. Even though thisIndividually-Guided Education model does not includeproductivity goals as a part of its structure, and althoughearly costs with innovative approaches are unfortunatelyusually high, a study of 39 of these multi-unit elementaryschools in eight states showed little or no increase in costsper student, including expenditures involved for instruc-tional materials and equipment.7

In a multi-unit, student-centered school system, produc-tivity goals can and should be set for the whole systemrather than just for individual grades or for individualschools. Manpower and other resources of the entire systemcan be pooled to achieve the overall student/adult ratiosnecessary to assure increasing productivities. Student/adultratios can vary widely as may be necessary or demanded bythe subject matter or the students to achieve the learningobjectives sought so long as the overall goals are met. Theentire school system can be so oriented as to develop in theindividual student a growing ability from his earliest yearsin school to self-initiate, self-pace, and self-rely. If this callsfor even lower student/adult ratios in the earlier years thanwe are using now, all well and good, provided this increaseis counterbalanced by higher ratios in the later years. Ifsome students require more help and lower student/adultratios, this need not affect overall productivity per personso long as these lower ratios are balanced by higher ratiosamong students requiring less adult help.

Tools and technology, instead of being simply grafted ona teacher-centered system not well suited to use them, canbe adapted or designed to meet th(; needs of the learningand productivity goals established. TV classrooms atscattered locations conducted in conjunction with live class-rooms, computer-aided instruction, audio and TV

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cassettesand new combinations, new tools, and newtechnologies not yet thought ofall can be applied asnecessary to meet the needs of the individual and theproductivity goals of the school system, but so can booksand correspondence courses designed to meet the learninggoals and the students' needs adequately. We already knowthat many of the new tools and technologies, such ascomputer-aided instruction and audio and televisioncassettes, lend themselves especially well to individualized,self-paced instruction.

An educational system with a student-centered culturecan be far less structured in its institutional responses thanour present system. For example, with an entire schoolsystem organized on this basis, there would no longer beany need for the present school year and summer vacation

pattern. Provided established learning and productivityobjectives were achieved, students and adults alike could fitin vacation time much more flexibly throughout the year.

Obviously, I do not believe this shift to a student-centered educational culture can be considered properlyimplemented until it consistently includes productivitygoals as well as educational goals. I certainly would hopethat one of our R&D laboratories concentrating on student-centering, such as the Wisconsin Research and DevelopmentCenter for Cognitive Learning, will expand its R&D effortsto include work on improving individual productivities sothat these conceptions can be developed to the point wherethey become a built-in part of the entire approach.

Figure 5 illustrates the kind of productivity gains thatwould be really meaningful. Of course, the desired student/adult ratios must be attained school system by schoolsystem and as established to meet the needs of that par-ticular system, but in my examples, I will work from theoverall national ratios.

The actual studerit/adult ratios in 1971-72 were 18.2for the elementary level, 9,7 for high school, and 6.1 forhigher education. For decades, in manufacturing industry,average gains in productivity per person per year of about

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Figure 5'

3% have been attained. Agriculture has been runningconsiderably higher than that, 5% or more per person peryear. But certainly a 3% gain per person per year inproductivity would represent a very significant accom-plishment for education. If we could assume that over the10 years following 1971-72 we could have taken steps toachieve that 3% gain in productivity per person per year,while still meeting our educational goals, the student/adultratio in 1981-82 would be 24.5 for the elementary level,13 for high school, and 8.2 in higher education.

These are not by any means impossible goals, as illus-trated most graphically by comparing them with the ratiosI presented earlier for kindergarten through eighth gradeand for high school. The 24.5 ratio for the elementaryschools in 1981-82, for example, is well below the 30.7ratio that existed in 1951-52, and the productivity goal of13 for high school is below the nearly 15 that prevailedthere in 1951-52.

Yet, it is gains in productivity per person per year of thismagnitude that we should be seeking, and the R&D beingconducted on student-centered systems should be searchingfor approaches which will allow these kinds of productivity

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goals to be established and attained along with the educa-tional goals. (I should add that I am oversimplifying intalking about productivity exclusively in terms of student/adult ratios. Obviously, one must be concerned, as well,about the other costs involved, and if these improvedstudent/adult ratios are attained by increasing facility,equipment, and supplies costs unduly, no overall reductionsin costs will result.)

In beginning this discussion, I emphasized that I thoughtone of the most important consequences of improvingproductivity per person was the human resources madeavailable to society. Now I know that to many, looking atit in the shorter perspective, it looks instead like puttingpeople out of work. Yet, it should be clear from theagricultural example I gave earlier that, in fact, in an active,economically dynamic society such as ours, what reallyhappens is that those resources are made available to dosomething else of more significance in the society.

Figure 6 shows what this kind of modest gain in produc-tivity per year would make available in 10 years, assumingthe total number of students in each of the three categoriesprojected for 1981-82 by the Department of Health,Education and Welfare.

Figure 6

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There would be 543,000 fewer adults in elementaryschools, 455,000 fewer in high school, and only 68,000more in higher education, in spite of an increase in enroll-ment of more than 3.5 million. Thus, across education as awhole, more than 900,000 highly qualified men and womenwould be made available to society to take on other tasks.

Obviously, we are not going to have this kind ofopportunity in 1981-82 because the overall cultural shiftto student-centering is only beginning, and it will takemany years to penetrate all of education. I wish we weregoing to have it, because I am convinced that when ourwhole educational culture is student-centered there aregoing to be two very important consequences:

1. The adult citizens it produces, accustomed from theirelementary school years through higher education toself-initiated, self-paced education and its relativefreedoms from the limitations of rigid schedules andfixed geographical locations, will have developed to afar greater extent than at present both the desire andability to continue organized study and learningthroughout their entire lives.

2. We will have in place in the United States a highlyflexible educational system, with the flexibilityincreasing with level and freed in the most part fromthe rigidities of fixed class schedules and specificschool locations. It will be perfectly feasible to mixwork and education in almost any combination thatmeets the individual's needs both from a time andsubject matter standpoint. Many students will beginmixing regular jobs and continuing study by theirearly high school years. Most will in college. The rateof change and increasing complexity of our societywill require adaptation and continued learning from allof us, and the convenience and ready and broad avail-ability of self-initiated and self-paced study will makeit customary for most adults to continue this kind offormal education throughout their entire lives.Presumably, the principal impetus will be the demand

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of their own career progressions, but wise developmentof the overall system will ensure that the opportunityfor continued cultural development is equally availableand sought after.

Present reproduction rates in the United States suggestthat our population is likely to stabilize not too far fromthe 250-million level, perhaps in another 40 to 50 years.With this kind of student centered learning syStem in place,I think the likelihood is very high that instead of 30% ofour total population being involved in formal education,three-quarters of them will be. None of this will be possibleuntil we find ways of freeing resources to allow it. We aregoing to need those 900,000 adults and the resources theyrepresent, and that is why I wish we were going to face theproblem and the opportunity that the higher student/adultratios I projected as goals would generate.

There is in the nation, and specifically in our Congress, agreat deal of justifiable concern at the apparent ineffective-ness of much of the research and development in educa-tion. Indeed, it does not take too much examination of theR&D efforts in education of this past decade or so toconclude that there has been much waste and that toomuch of the effort has been unproductive. That being thecase, one of my principal preoccupations since becomingChairman of the National Council on Educational Researchon its initiation last July has been to ask those who haveparticipated in educational R&D to give examples ofdemonstratedly successful consequences from R&D, includ-ing the evaluation data that justify the judgment that theseare successful efforts.

Incidentally, I want to hasten to emphasize that thejudgments I express are entirely my own; in no sense, am Ispeaking for the National Institute of Education or theNational Council on Educational Research. To me, althoughsome of the examples given do, indeed, represent goodwork with high potential for affecting education positively,in the overall the responses have been singularlyunsatisfying and not very helpful in convincing the skeptic

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that past research and development in education has beenworth while oreven more importantthat it justifiescontinued and enlarged financial support in the future.Even those most enthusiastic about the probable impact ofIPI or IGE have, it seems to me, tended to emphasize themore immediate and narrowly based consequences of theseefforts. Yet, I am convinced that the overall eventualimpact of the research and development bringing about thisshift in our educational culture from teacher-centering tostudent-centering is of overwhelming importance and thatits consequences will be of exactly that far-reaching andconstructive kind that one hopes for and which occasion-ally results from R&D. If so, then, these consequencesalone are more than sufficient to justify many times overthe total resources committed thus far to the entireeducational research and development effort. It is true that,for the kind of revolutionary consequences I envision todevelop: (1) a more coherent pattern of student-centeringmust evolve, extending from kindergarten completelythrough higher education; (2) productivity goals must beincluded normally and routinely along with the otherimportant educational goals, and (3) we must succeed indeveloping the kind of lifelong education patterns I

anticipate.But, in turn, these are exactly the important effects that

student-centering makes possible and are in themselves areaswhere fruitful additional research and development can andshould be conducted. The researchers involved do have todevelop a clearer and more coherent vision of what issought, and the overall effort needs to be broadened andcoordinated so that the total potential of the shift may berealized, but no one working in this field need be diffidentas to the significance of his effort.

I suggest that not only is the research and developmentproducing the student-centering of major significance toeducation, but it is one of the most important efforts inresearch and development in any field now being con-ducted. Further, I am convinced it will succeed.

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R&D AND PRODUCTIVITY IN EDUCATION

References

1. a. Agriculture data developed from:(1) 1890Economic Growth in the United States.

New York: Committee for Economic Develop-ment, October 1969.

(2) 1972Survey of Current Business, U.S. Dept. ofCommerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, July1973, p. 42, Table 6.6.

b. Education data developed from National Center forEducational Statistics, U.S. Department of Health,Education, and Welfare, Office of Education:(1) 1890Biennial Survey of Education, 1950-52.(2) 1972Projections of Educational Statistics to

1981-82, Tables 27 & 31, together with:(a) Statistics of State School Systems, 1963-70

related issues, pp. 3-4.(b) Numbers and Characteristics of Employees

in Institutions of Higher Education,1966-67 related issues.

c. Survey of Current Business, July 1973, p. 42,Table 6.4.

2. Data developed from same sources as Ref. 1b(2).3. Ibid.4. Kulik, Kulik, and Carmichael, "The Keller Plan in

Science Teaching," Science Magazine, Vol. 183, 1 Feb.1974, p. 379.

5. Keller, Fred S., "Good-Bye, Teacher ...," Journal ofApplied Behavior Analysis, 1968, Vol. 1, p. 83. (c)

1968 by the Society for the Experimental Analysis ofBehavior, Inc.

6. Ibid., p. 88.7. "Promoting Change in Schools: A Diffusion Casebook,"

Far West Laboratory for Educational Research andDevelopment, Draft, October 1973.

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8. 1 971-72 data developed from same sources as

Ref. lb(2).1981-82 data developed by TI Advanced EconomicPlanning Department.

9. 1971 -72 data developed from same sources as

Ref. lb(2).1981-82 data developed by TI Advanced EconomicPlanning Department and Projections of EducationalStatistics to 1981-82, 1972 edition.

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