Introduction I. Adam Smith in his famous An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations asks,
"Ought the public... give not attention... to the education of the people? Or if it ought to give any, what are the different parts of the education which it ought to attend to in the different orders of the people? And in what manner ought it to attend to them?"1
Smith himself answers these questions, not succinctly, but throughout Book V Section I of Wealth of Nations. However, prior to investigating Smith's views on education, it is beneficial to understand the state of education in 18 th century England, the period in which Smith lived. Eighteenth century England had no state run public education system2. Education as a whole was funded either by the church, or by philanthropists concerned with bettering the society as a whole. The overall quality of education in England was lacking during this period. Richardson refers to the eighteenth century as a degenerate period in English education "when the education in England generally reached its lowest level of decline." 3 The nation's top Universities, Oxford and Cambridge, were not exempt from this decline either, as poor administrative oversight policies had led to the point where Smith notes that some instructors had given up lecturing all together. Public institutions had ambiguous incentive structures at best, the number of free-lance instructors was on the rise, and amongst this disjointed system there were no universal standards which a student had to meet in order to graduate. The one positive note is that the philanthropy of the Tudor and Stuart periods was increasing access to grammar school, college and university education for lower classes, but the endowments were not structured well. These inefficiencies, along with others, were observed by Smith, and he addresses most of them in Wealth of Nations.
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II. On the Need for Basic Education As for childhood education, Smith asserts that it is necessary and should be provided for by the state, at least in part, and offered to all classes. He specifically addresses the poor, and the explicit and opportunity costs faced by common families in educating their children,
"[Common people] have little time to spare for education. Their parents can scarce afford to maintain them in infancy. As soon as they are able to work they must apply to some trade by which they can earn their subsistence. That trade, too, is generally so simple and uniform as to give little exercise to the understanding while, at the same time, their labor is both so constant and so severe, that it leaves them little leisure and less inclination to apply to, or even to think of anything else. 1
and in the next breath reasons away these potential barriers,
"But though the common people cannot, in any civilized society, be so well instructed as people of some rank and fortune, the most essential parts of education, however, to read, write, and account, can be acquired at so early a period of life that the greater part even of those who are to be bred to the lowest occupations have time to acquire them before they can be employed in those occupations. For a very small expence the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education." 1
Essentially, Smith is arguing that the rudiments of education can be obtained by all at little or no cost (explicit or implicit). Any explicit costs of education could and should be offset by the society according to Smith, so that the government and society can operate without fear of undue political hindrance,
The state... derives no inconsiderable advantage from their instruction. The more they are instructed the less liable they are to delusions of enthusiasm and superstition, which among ignorant nations, frequently occasion the most dreadful disorders. An instructed and intelligent people besides are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one. They feel themselves... more respectable and more likely to obtain the respect of their lawful superiors, and they are therefore more disposed to respect those superiors. They are...less apt to be misled into any wanton or unnecessary opposition to the measures of government. 1
Smith insinuates at different points in his work that subversive government and religious movements that mislead the masses are often the responsible parties for instability. The solution to this problem is to provide at least basic education. The cost of this basic education need not necessarily come from the state in Smith's eyes though, as he notes that throughout Europe it is common practice for provincial and local revenues, and for
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private sources (land and monetary endowments) to offset the cost of schools (and universities as will be noted later). Smith also had a proposed curriculum for these basic schools. He did not completely oppose the basic religious instruction that the schools of his time were administering, however he had in mind something more fit for the mass of common people. He believed these commoners would be better served with tutelage in geometry and simple mechanics than with Latin,
"There is scarce a common trade which does not afford some opportunities of applying it the principles of geometry and mechanics, and which would not therefore gradually exercise and improve the common people in those principles, the necessary introduction to the most sublime as well as to the most useful sciences." 1
Essentially Smith favors basic education for all, because though he does not overtly state it, he observes the return to the individual and to society far outweighs the cost. However, because of the state of affairs of England's educational system in his day he does advocate certain changes in order to improve efficiency and appropriateness. III. On Higher Education Smith had an unequivocal disdain for the Higher Education system as it was run in his time. Whether this stems from his own experiences, or from the fact that England's system was on the decline relative to other western nations is unclear, but there is no doubt that he was an advocate of changing the system. His first and most persistent observation is of the perverse incentive structures for instructors, and the origins of these incentives,
"The endowments of schools and colleges have necessarily diminished... the necessity of application in the teachers. Their subsistence, so far as it arises from their salaries, is evidently derived from a fund altogether independent of their success and reputation... In some universities the salary makes but a part and frequently but a small part of the emoluments of the teacher, of which the greater part arises from the honoraries or fees his of pupils. The necessity of application... is not entirely taken away." 1
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"In other universities the teacher is prohibited from receiving any honorary or fee from his pupils, and his salary constitutes the whole of the revenue which he derives from his office. His interest is... set as directly in opposition to his duty as it is possible to set it." 1 "If the authority to which he is subject resides in the body corporate...which the greater part of the other members are, like himself, persons who are, or ought to be teachers... they are all likely... to be very indulgent to one another and every man to consent that his neighbor may neglect his duty... In the University of Oxford, the greater part of the public professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the pretence of teaching." 1
These few excerpts are only the beginning of Smith's barrage on the problems of poor incentives and of monitoring instructors. He continues on to comment that even if there are monitors in place that would intend to keep the instructors honest, they would not be well educated enough in any particular field to correctly monitor, and therefore policy would be "arbitrary and discretionary". Smith also uses supply and demand analysis to indicate that this will be an ever increasing problem:
"Whatever forces a certain number of students to any college or university, independent of the merit or reputation of the teachers, tends more or less to diminish the necessity of merit or reputation." 1
This is definitely a contemporary problem in Smith's time, as indicated by Cressy, the enrollments at colleges and universities were on the rise2. This undoubtedly led to a spillover effect, and less qualified or motivated instructors teaching in public institutions, an inefficiency that would not be acceptable to Smith. The second problem noted by Smith with education is the amount of antiquated and useless information being taught at college and university:
"The greater part of universities have not even been very forward to adopt those improvements, after they were made; and several of those learned societies have chosen to remain, for a long time, the sanctuaries in which exploded systems and obsolete prejudices found shelter and protection, after they had been hunted out of every other corner of the world. In general, the richest and best endowed universities have been the slowest in adopting those improvements, and the most avers to permit any considerable change in the established plan of education. Those improvements were more easily introduced into some of the poorer universities, in which the teachers, depending upon their reputation for the greater part of their subsistence, were obliged to pay more attention to the current opinions of the world." 1
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He noted also that due to the origins of most higher education institutions, namely that of schools of theology, they were not prepared to teach the incoming masses demanding an education that would help them succeed in business. Though he advocates some teaching on ethics, he implicitly argues that the return to education would be higher if it were geared more to serve the business world rather than the theological one. Smith's solution to these problems in higher education is quite simple; open it up to market forces. He posits England would be better suited by instituting a system in which the majority of an instructor's recompense would be tied to the honorarium paid by the student, so that a professor's reputation and subsequent efficacy would determine his financial gains from teaching. This would eliminate the incentive, monitoring and appropriateness problems in one move. He states this would put more of the power in the hands of the students, who were demanders of education in his mind, and force the masters to improve their skills, as they are the suppliers of education. He noted that under this private system all education would be adequate and appropriate for the time and need of the market: "Were there no public institutions for education, a gentleman, after going through, with application
and abilities, the most complete course of education which the circumstances of the times were supposed to afford, could not come into the world completely ignorant of every thing which is the common subject of conversation among gentlemen and men of the world." 1 "Were there no public institutions for education, no system, no science would be taught for which there was not some demand; or which the circumstances of the times did not render it either necessary, or convenient, or at least fashionable, to learn." 1
Smith is obviously in favor of opening education up to the influence of market forces, but a question of social justice and access arises from his proposed system. It should be noted that Smith did not object to philanthropy in education, just the contemporary system of his time. Given the opportunity he certainly would have answered any criticisms with solutions such as scholarship programs or philanthropic gifts or grants 5
being supplied to the less privileged to obtain an advanced education in a manner that would not lead to negative incentives. Critics of Smith would cite this lack of an express solution to the problem of access as the fatal flaw in Smith's system, however, it is obvious from the whole of Smith's work that he was not advocating an elitist system, just and efficient one with proper incentives and appropriate content. IV. Conclusion Adam Smith wrote a great deal about education, and the selections discussed above are only a fraction of Smith's entire view on education and its place in the society. Smith was in favor of opening up the schooling system to market forces in order to increase efficiency and relevancy. Though no solution to the problem of access is explicitly stated, Smith no doubt would have reasoned a logical answer to this based on his observations given the opportunity. Smith's observations remain relevant to this day, as the problem of weak incentives, sub-optimal monitoring, and content appropriateness continue to plague the educational systems throughout the world.4
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1. Smith, A., 1776, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Book V Section I "Of the expences of the Sovereign or the Commonwealth" 2. Cressy, D., 1976, "Educational Opportunity in Tudor and Stuart England", History of Education Quarterly, 16:3, 301-320 3. Richardson, W.C. 1953 "Trends in Public School Education in England" Journal of Educational Sociology, 27:1, 4-15 4. Belfield, C.R., 2001, "Did Adam Smith Know Everything about the Economics of Education, or Nothing?" Working Paper, National Center for the Privatization of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
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