Why is schooling so expensive? Government makes it so.
Take the recent example, in California, of “coder boot camps.” These are “schools” where computer coders receive training. We now learn that the Golden State’s education bureaucrats are cracking down on this unlicensed and unregulated form of learning.
Unless they comply, these organizations face imminent closure and a hefty $50,000 fine. These organizations have two weeks to start coming into compliance.
In mid-January, the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE) sent cease and desist letters to Hackbright Academy, Hack Reactor, App Academy, Zipfian Academy, and others.
The regulators insist that these private enterprises fall under their regulatory domain, and they are going to do their job, dangit, even if it helps … no one.
Reaction from the coder academy heads has been boilerplate. They’ve attested to their will to co-operate with regulators, but worry that current regulations do not really have much to do with what they are up to.
Hey, regulators, rather than shut these academies down, or cook up new regs, why not just let the operations go on as before?
Worried about quality control in a consumer-protection sense? Then make one requirement: The schools should notify paying students that the academy’s services and education contracts are unregulated by the state. Make do, students, with caveat emptor, as before. That is, by the principles of market supply and demand, and undergirding laws against fraud.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
6 replies on “Just What We Need”
Regulation quickly evolves to the protection of the entrenched, and the enemy of the innovator.
The consumer is always subject to the real economic law of caveat emptor. The real and unintended consequence of such regulation is the consumer is lulled into inattentiveness, and therefore victimhood, by believing they are “protected”.
Education, like all services is a market function. Like all economic activities it serves best and is most efficient when the market for it is open, voluntary and free.
Clearly economic education in California is failing, perhaps the regulators should focus on that.
The market wants what the market wants. If people cannot get it legally, they will work around.
Bureaucrat: (Sputtering) But, but, what you guys and Paul Jacob are saying is just, just, too much common sense. We cannot tolerate that!
(Forgive my attempt at satire, but could not resist)
Two words: SCHOOL VOUCHERS
Let the free market destroy bad schools and reward good schools.
I agree with Jacob’s prescription, but for all commerce.
The money we’d save would be enormous, as all the taxes, regulations, and cost of following regulator’s orders, just adds to the price of what we pay for goods/services. If there’s a dispute, then that’s what the courts are for.
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