Great performances and interactions

Kara Miller recently interviewed David Autor for the WGBH radio program Innovation Hub. Autor is an MIT economics professor and co-chair of the MIT Work of the Future Task Force. He believes that the coronavirus pandemic will strengthen some areas of the economy — higher education, for one. He says that “the change in educational modality” will be disruptive at first but beneficial in the long run. Why? Because in-person residential education is expensive, and all interactions “happen at low scale”:

“In hundreds of classrooms every fall, economics instructors open up Greg Mankiw’s Principles of Economics and do their version of that book for undergraduates. And it’s like, in a thousand theaters, a thousand mediocre versions of Hamlet are all being performed. [Laughter.] Why not just have one great performance by the British Shakespeare Society and we can all watch it on video?”

I guess the work of the future will require far fewer economics instructors. (MIT grad students, take note.) Far fewer directors, actors, theater managers, and set and costume designers too. Not to mention plays. Autor presents such a diminished idea of education — as one-way communication, with spectators watching a star at work. That’s the model, of course, for the MOOC (massive online open course), which I daresay is far inferior to many a local starless effort in building human abilities and relationships.

As for “the British Shakespeare Society,” there is, of course, no such organization. There is a British Shakespeare Association, which describes itself as “committed to bringing together scholars, students, teachers, theatre practitioners, community workers and other professions with a shared interest in Shakespeare.” And there’s the Royal Shakespeare Company, an institution no doubt gladdened by the thought of people performing Shakespeare wherever they may be. Ian McKellen himself appeared in a documentary about the Hobart Shakespeareans.

To his credit, Autor says that changes in the shape of higher education will show us what was valuable in past ways of doing things, and that we will better understand “why we were paying for all that.” But notice: were, as if the changes he anticipates have already happened, everywhere, for everyone.

A 2014 OCA post, The gold standard, haircuts, and everyone else, has more about the rhetoric of disruption in higher education. Why haircuts? Because there, too, all interactions “happen at a low scale.”

[I’ve edited Autor’s words to remove many you know s.]