tbf a 1950s vending machine was probably for like cigarettes and DDT-flavored soda.

Maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe I have discovered a Fundamental Law of Education and will be the first-ever recipient of the Nobel Prize in Education Posting. Too early to say.

So here's the interesting thing (imo). The teaching force (public + private) grew from 1.3M to 3.7M between 1955 and 2021. With a bit less rounding, it's an increase of 188%. And if you look at the change in total nonfarm payroll in the U.S. from October 1955 to October 2021 it's...189%.

What's that mean? I dunno! But I think it's interesting-maybe-kind-of-amazing that the size of the teacher workforce is so loosely related to the number of students but so closely related to the size of the nationwide workforce.

(The updating feature is nice because besides updating references and things I can catch little mistakes, including in this part of the chapter where I mix up public and public + private in a couple of places, and am a bit unclear in others.)

So here's the interesting thing (imo). The teaching force (public + private) grew from 1.3M to 3.7M between 1955 and 2021. With a bit less rounding, it's an increase of 188%. And if you look at the change in total nonfarm payroll in the U.S. from October 1955 to October 2021 it's...189%.

My first "key finding" is about the aggregate size of the teaching force, and how it's grown both a lot in absolute terms and much faster than student enrollment. OK, sure, so the workforce grew faster than the student population, fine, whatever.

And fee waivers, I think.

I dunno that still sounds bonkers to me!

Ah. That's kind of bonkers, right, that that's not somehow reflected in the data?

The tricky piece is that the ones who don't foot the bill don't show up in the data (due to not taking out debt).

If I have to think about it you have to think about it.