Happiness vs opportunity

One of Gordon Brown's longstanding ideas has been that schools must unlock hidden talent. We "cannot afford to waste the potential of any child, discard the ability of any young person, leave untapped the talents of any adult."
This seems trivially reasonable, doesn't it?
No. This new paper points out that a school system that provides lots of opportunities can end up making us unhappier:

The idea that expanding work and consumption opportunities always increases people's wellbeing is well established in economics but finds no support in psychology...
Expanding work and consumption opportunities are a good thing for decision utility but may not be so for experienced utility.

The problem is that of an education-induced prediction bias. A school that gives us lots of opportunities raises our aspirations by more than it raises our likely achievements. The upshot is that its students end up unhappy, feeling they've missed their chances.
Take two similar people in similar, decent jobs. One went to an expensive school that gave lots of opportunities for its students to become sportsmen, musicians, politicians or high-earners. The other went to a bog-standard comp. The latter is likely to be happier. Whereas the posh schoolboy will be filled with self-reproach at having missed so many opportunities, the comp boy will be happy at having made something of his life.
There is, therefore, a trade-off between maximizing opportunities and maximizing utility. And as Brown exaggerates our need for talent and skills, perhaps there is a case for settling for having bad schools - especially as there's always something to be said for reconciling oneself to the inevitable.

Comments

[John M]

This is an argument for selective education isn't it? In a selected-by-ability school population the disjunction between raised aspiration and potential to realise it will be less.

[ortega]

After reading your post, I remember Nozik. For him the 'posh school boy' may become an anticapitalist, once he has not found in society, I was going to write life, the rewards he believes to deserve after his top notch school results.
Anyway, as I think Goethe said: happiness is a matter of the low orders (or sometning of the kind).

[Tim Worstall]

"One went to an expensive school that gave lots of opportunities for its students to become sportsmen, musicians, politicians or high-earners. The other went to a bog-standard comp. The latter is likely to be happier. Whereas the posh schoolboy will be filled with self-reproach at having missed so many opportunities, the comp boy will be happy at having made something of his life."

We could make that shorter. An increase in opportunities increases opportunity costs.

[dearieme]

How does that dreadful English attitude - it's not for the likes of us - impinge on your considerations, Mr D?

[Dave]

Setting aside the impact on the individual, isn't it bad for the rest of us if a child's "potential is wasted"? Leaving them less able to produce whatever it is we might want? (The things we want seem in practice to require an increasingly well educated work force over time)

I think that whatever psychological issues there may be with a good education can and should be addressed directly, rather than by settling for a poorer standard of education.

[Bob B]

"How does that dreadful English attitude - it's not for the likes of us - impinge?"

The really horrifying insight is that in places not much has advanced since George Orwell wrote this in 1936:

"The time was when I used to lament over quite imaginary pictures of lads of fourteen dragged protesting from their lessons and set to work at dismal jobs. It seemed to me dreadful that the doom of a 'job' should descend upon anyone at fourteen. Of course I know now that there is not one working-class boy in a thousand who does not pine for the day when he will leave school. He wants to be doing real work, not wasting his time on ridiculous rubbish like history and geography. To the working class, the notion of staying at school till you are nearly grown-up seems merely contemptible and unmanly."
http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/6.html

[reason]

Ivan Illich were are you now? Yes it is terrible that schools are prisons. But how can we give people the opportunity to learn what they want WHEN they need it? Why is wage slavery considered OK (normal even)? So many questions, so few answers.

[Caravaggio]

'An increase in opportunities increases opportunity costs' - TW

Fantastic!

[Scratch]

"How does that dreadful English attitude - it's not for the likes of us - impinge?"

I rather thought that dreadful English attitude was the direct result of being told repeatedly from infancy, by inference and example "it's not for the likes of you."

[marbury]

"We could make that shorter. An increase in opportunities increases opportunity costs"

Or shorter still: ignorance is bliss.

I have to say, I think this is nonsense. The mistake, in my view, is to assume that happiness (or that dread word, 'utility') is an end in itself, at least in any measurable sense.

Yes, give a person more oppportunities, give them more to think about, and they will also have more to worry about. But it doesn't follow that we should aim to create a society of worry-free, 'happy' automatons. That's just creepy.

marbury

http://www.marbury.typepad.com

[dearieme]

"I rather thought that dreadful English attitude was the direct result of being told repeatedly from infancy, by inference and example "it's not for the likes of you." Could be, but I've never seen any sign of it. Self-imposed gorblimeyness is my guess.

[Bob B]

"I rather thought that dreadful English attitude was the direct result of being told repeatedly from infancy, by inference and example 'it's not for the likes of you.'"

In the mid 1970s, half of Britain's adult population had no education qualifications at all. By 20 years later, that had shrunk to a quarter. Evidently, on the demand side the message was slowly getting through that education does improve employment advantages. For all that S&M says here, the fact is that graduates, on average, gain higher incomes and have higher employment rates and lower unemployment rates than non-graduates.

Britain's special problem is a higher drop out rate from education and training at 16 compared with almost all peer-group countries:

"Last year [2004], a report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) revealed that Britain came seventh from bottom in a league table of staying-on rates [in education and training] for 19 countries. Only Mexico and Turkey had significantly lower rates of participation for this age group. Italy, New Zealand, Portugal and Slovakia have marginally lower rates."
http://education.guardian.co.uk/gcses/story/0,16086,1555547,00.html

Try also this illuminating LSE research study on factors influencing social mobility in Britain:

"Comparing surveys of children born in the 1950s and the 1970s, the researchers went on to examine the reason for Britain's low, and declining, mobility. They found that it is in part due to the strong and increasing relationship between family income and educational attainment.

"For these children, additional opportunities to stay in education at age 16 and age 18 disproportionately benefited those from better off backgrounds. For a more recent cohort born in the early 1980s the gap between those staying on in education at age 16 narrowed, but inequality of access to higher education has widened further: while the proportion of people from the poorest fifth of families obtaining a degree has increased from 6 per cent to 9 per cent, the graduation rates for the richest fifth have risen from 20 per cent to 47 per cent."
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/pressAndInformationOffice/newsAndEvents/archives/2005/LSE_SuttonTrust_report.htm