It is always interesting to discuss about honesty, integrity or trustworthiness especially in today’s world.  Though the seeds of these great characteristics have been embedded into humans when they are created, as time passes by, the seeds can grow or die or may get corrupted for many reasons.  When short-run profit is more important than delivering and satisfying customers’ satisfaction in the decision making process, then the actors’ actions might negatively affect the interests of the whole society.  Should we blame Jevons, Carl Menger and Leon Walras and other followers of Neoclassical Economics ideas for the current system has left consumers to be worse-off?

One can observe the dying seeds are occurring in the US education system.  The regulator has very noble ideas how to make the country strives in the world and how the country’s competitiveness in the global market can be maintained and improved through education.  This burning desire motivates the regulator to design education policies so that national dream can be achieved.  Letting various for-profit and not-for-profit institutions to actively participate in the process show another side how great Uncle Sam is.  However, with the skyrocketed of college education cost and massive student debts, it seems that American public’s trust on the involved parties have been betrayed.  The entrusted seeds of these great characteristics have been corrupted in all directions.

The great ideas to make the US to be one of the most educated countries in the world fall short because lack of integrity of the actors.  One just cannot assume that the great seeds will always grow in the right direction.  Lacks of supervision and accountability in all sides of the isles have created a perfect storm.  The storm is so powerful and it has caused almost impossible even for the best and most experienced captain to prevent the ship from sinking (over 1400 pages pdf file). The American public knows that the current system is unsustainable or in the economic jargon—Pareto optimality is out-of-reach.  However, no one really knows how, when, where to start and what need to be done?  There are senses of helpless, giving-up, surrender and confusion.  The phrase to-big-to-fail is often cited to justify the condition.  Please keep in mind that even though we have the traffic-light, the society still needs the law enforcement to make it effective.  Perhaps, the time has arrived for the US to have ESCC (Education Standard and Compliance Commission).  Such compliance is badly needed so that Pareto improvement can be attained.