Welcome to episode 2 of our It All Adds Up podcast about the economics of the everyday.
This week we take a deep dive into the national debate raging about education to uncover what really needs to be done to improve our schools and universities.
Join Jess Irvine, Matt Wade and Ross Gittins as we pick apart Malcolm Turnbull's Gonski 2.0 reforms, which passed through parliament last week largely unscathed.
Cabinet minister Christopher Pyne hailed the legislation as "the most significant reform to school education in Australia's history".
But will it really deliver a cheaper and more redistributive schools funding plan than Labor's alternative?
The economics editor of The Age, Peter Martin, recalls the time he had to FOI the Gonski report because under Pyne, as then education minister, it had been expunged it from all government websites.
Peter Martin.
Martin also unpicks for us the "completely wrong" argument that providing public funding for private schools saves taxpayers money in the long run.
Meanwhile, The Sydney Morning Herald's economics editor, Ross Gittins, says making uni students repay debts earlier "isn't all that draconian" and accuses vice-chancellors of being more interested in funding research that will help them climb the global rankings than in providing quality teaching for undergraduates.
"The problem with universities is that they are interested in doing research, and the education of our students - which the general public in its ignorance imagines to be the main reason we have universities, and the main reason governments pay money to universities - that is very much a poor relation."
"Look, when economists bang on about human capital, that's actually about teaching, that's actually about making sure that the people who come out of the education system..it's about what you get into their heads."
"[But] there are virtually no rewards for uni lecturers who are good at teaching and who put a lot of time and effort into being good at teaching. The system, the incentives inside universities, discourages people from wasting much time on students. Students are regarded as a 'necessary evil'."
"Now, that is wrong and that is stuffed up."
So, is it still worth getting a university degree?
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