Today’s New York Times has some interesting stories on the subject of “Will Americans who are called to the field of education also respond to the call of economic incentives?”:
- “Some Owners of Private Colleges Turn a Tidy Profit by Going Nonprofit” (where “tidy” = a few hundred $million)
- “Central Figure in the Atlanta Schools Cheating Scandal Dies” about a school superintendent who “received more than $500,000 in performance bonuses.”
Spoiler alert: The answer seems to be “yes”.
Don’t miss the link from the first article to a story about a school with a $2.1 billion market cap working the same angle (also note the inability of the journalist to distinguish between investment in a company and its market cap). Speaking of market cap, it turns out that the “fair market price” in this insider’s deal will be higher than what investors are currently willing to pay on the NASDAQ.
[Note that these dovetail nicely with yesterday’s article by a philosopher demanding that America’s educators teach morality to students. And also with “Lawyer at Top of Huge Fraud Pleads Guilty”, an article about how “more than 131 police officers, firefighters and other city workers” who obtained disability benefits through fraud. (Note that working the disability system was a rational decision: “More than 100 of the applicants have pleaded guilty. A majority received no jail time but returned the money they stole.”)]