I recently came across a paper by Ursina Schaede and Ville Mankki that contains a fascinating empirical finding with major implications for the way in which we think about meritocracy. The paper examines the long run effects on students of a change in the manner in which their teachers were selected into a graduate program. Finland is well known for having an extremely effective school system, in part because primary teacher education has been “exclusively taught as a research-oriented, five year masters’ degree at universities” since the 1970s. These programs are in very high demand among applicants, with acceptance rates of about 10 percent. The admissions process has a first stage based largely on scores on a high school matriculation exam, followed by a second stage involving interviews and the evaluation of live teaching. Candidates are ranked again at the end of the process, and those at the top are taken until capacity is filled.
This might be too long a time for a response, but the paper was recently mentioned in the Economist and I found this blog post because I was curious if others had talked about it.
I think your premise about the quota being a proxy could certainly be correct, but the article just seems to give an implausible amount of weight to how students are accepted into the university as the only? mechanism for the success of a different cohert of students at least 30 years later. Schaede and Mankki are not talking a quota system for hiring teachers — they are talking about how Education majors get accepted into a university. They aren’t saying that student success at the university changed after the introduction of the quota. They are talking about the performance of 25 year olds whose primary school teacher was accepted into university under different systems (and it certainly complicates stats of matriculation exams when one takes into account that not all beginning Education majors will graduate with a degree in Education, and not all those that graduate will find a job, etc). I just can’t see how the data can be used to support the assertion, even if the underlying premise is correct. In effect, isn’t the article asserting that the education/employment achievements of a 25 year old is due to how their elementary school teacher got accepted to a university?
(As a factual issue, I doubt that retirement was mandatory at 60, but I arrived in Finland after the years in question so I don’t know that for sure. I suspect it was more that primary school teachers *could* retire at 60, with a reduction in pension if they hdn’t worked enough years).
This might be too long a time for a response, but the paper was recently mentioned in the Economist and I found this blog post because I was curious if others had talked about it.
I think your premise about the quota being a proxy could certainly be correct, but the article just seems to give an implausible amount of weight to how students are accepted into the university as the only? mechanism for the success of a different cohert of students at least 30 years later. Schaede and Mankki are not talking a quota system for hiring teachers — they are talking about how Education majors get accepted into a university. They aren’t saying that student success at the university changed after the introduction of the quota. They are talking about the performance of 25 year olds whose primary school teacher was accepted into university under different systems (and it certainly complicates stats of matriculation exams when one takes into account that not all beginning Education majors will graduate with a degree in Education, and not all those that graduate will find a job, etc). I just can’t see how the data can be used to support the assertion, even if the underlying premise is correct. In effect, isn’t the article asserting that the education/employment achievements of a 25 year old is due to how their elementary school teacher got accepted to a university?
(As a factual issue, I doubt that retirement was mandatory at 60, but I arrived in Finland after the years in question so I don’t know that for sure. I suspect it was more that primary school teachers *could* retire at 60, with a reduction in pension if they hdn’t worked enough years).
Rajiv:
Regarding "meritocracy," let me reiterate <a href="https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2007/12/04/meritocracy_won/">my point</a> (derived from James Flynn) that meritocracy won’t happen: the problem’s with the “ocracy.”