Education – Page 20 – Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

Adjuncts and academic quality in higher education

Data on faculty composition in higher education: 1969: 21.7% non-tenure track and 78.3% tenure-track positions. 2009: 66.5% ineligible for tenure and 33.5% tenure-track positions.[1] Three questions about quality in higher education, in light of the data. 1. Do adjuncts or tenure-trackers deliver better instruction? Adjuncts tend to be younger, hungrier, more excited about being instructors, […]

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How Can We Make Entrepreneurs? Steve Jobs and Philosophy

Leave a Comment / Education, Entrepreneurship / Stephen Hicks

Here is the PDF of my chapter “How Can We Make Entrepreneurs?”, which was published in Shawn Klein’s edited volume Steve Jobs and Philosophy (Open Court, 2015), pp. 53-66. Click on the image at left to see a larger view of the cover. My chapter begins by noting Steve Jobs’s troubles within the formal school

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Education’s “Public Choice” Dynamic

Leave a Comment / Education / Stephen Hicks

Arguments for government involvement in education are many. They include the views that many parents cannot afford to educate their children, that private philanthropy cannot make up the deficit, that too many parents don’t care enough about education, and more. At the same time, government involvement in education has risks: * Less parental control over

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Are schools worse than factory jobs for kids?

3 Comments / Education / Stephen Hicks

From a post by Lant Pritchett at the World Bank site: “In the early 20th century Helen Todd, a factory inspector in Chicago, interviewed 500 children working in factories, often in dangerous and unpleasant conditions. She asked children the question: ‘If your father had a good job and you didn’t have to work, which would

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Does schooling reduce crime?

1 Comment / Education / Stephen Hicks

A standard argument for mandatory schooling is that it reduces crime. Behind that argument are claims that formal education civilizes and/or that schooling gets kids off the streets where they otherwise might be. That is to say, in economics-speak, that education has positive externalities beyond whatever other value one already ascribes it. I’m still re-reading

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Kostyło on school failure’s independence of political change

1 Comment / Education, Philosophy, Politics / Stephen Hicks

A interesting and disturbing article by Professor Piotr Kostyło on “School failure and its interpretations” [pdf], published in Kultura Pedagogiczna out of the University of Warsaw. Kostyło is a professor of philosophy of education at the University of Kazimierz Wielki. Kostyło’s analysis is disturbing because it suggests that Poland’s change from communism to liberal democracy

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Updated: Classic Readings in Philosophy of Education

Leave a Comment / Education, Philosophy / Stephen Hicks

To accompany my Philosophy of Education course lectures on video, here are readings from key philosophers. Idealism: Plato (the Allegory of the Cave from Republic) and Immanuel Kant (from On Education). Realism: Aristotle (from Politics) and John Locke (from Some Thoughts concerning Education). Pragmatism: John Dewey (from Democracy and Education). Behaviorism: B. F. Skinner (from

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Update: my publications in Education

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I’ve updated the Education page to include recent publications, lectures, and posts.

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