The Christian worldview calls for a market in education that provides students with a passport to freedom.  

 

“Education is the key to unlocking the world, a passport to freedom.”  I noticed that quote from Oprah Winfrey on the wall of the Nashville airport recently, while Ginger and I were there for the recording of the theme song for the Christian Economist, titled Earn a Profit.  More about the song some other time.  Today, my subject is education and who owns it. 

 

God’s Frameworks

First the phrase, “unlocking the world.”  She is absolutely correct, and I agree.  I’ve often said that my hope is that my students at Dallas Baptist University will say, “Professor Arnott helped me understand my world.”  And, I’m just the messenger.  The information comes from so many authors.  Just a small example: In the first chapter of the Strategic Management book I use, the authors have listed 132 citations.  That’s just amazing.  Think about all the information that gets sifted and sorted, and categorized into just that ONE chapter.  There are 15 chapters in the book, and students take almost 40 courses to earn an undergrad degree.  Let’s see: 132 x 15 x 40 = 79,800.  Do you realize the power of those frameworks?  The authors scour the landscape of writing and research on a subject and distill it into simple frameworks that explain the world to students.  What a fascinating example of a market, with thousands of suppliers of information.  I unpack more on this topic in podcast #108 titled God’s Frameworks.

Now, the second part of the quote, “…a passport to freedom.”  According to Ms. Winfrey - who earned a degree at Tennessee State University – education belongs to the student who earns it.  Because, like education, passports are granted by an institution, TO the recipient.  And what do they grant the student?  Freedom.  Perhaps the most common phrase I use as The Christian Economist is, “The intersection of Christianity and Economics is freedom.” 

 

Intellectual Capital

I mentioned to my Econ students just this week, that people who think the US can’t sustain 3% GDP growth are not exercising the Christian worldview.  We are creative because we were made by our creator, in His image.  That creative image has not left us.  It’s still there.  Whether it gets applied, depends on the positive and negative motivations expressed toward it, by governmental regulation.

Here’s a formula for the value of a firm, from my Strategy book:  Market value – book value = Intellectual capital.  Ok, so the market value is the share price times the number of shares.  Again: Virtually every one of the 7.7 billion people in the world has an opportunity to VOTE on the daily value of a stock.  You multiply that times the number of shares to obtain market value often called market capitalization.  Then you consider the book value: That’s the value of the hard assets when they were added to the firm.  The difference between those two?  That’s what’s between the ears of the people who work there. 

In his book Wealth and Poverty, George Gilder makes it very clear that the value of a firm derives directly from the information contributed by its employees.

 

The Education Monopoly

In contrast to the previously cited market where the intellectual capital of thousands of people are poured in, the fallen nature always wants to reduce that market to a monopoly, and that’s what we have in lots of public education today. 

An article in the WSJ this week titled “