GMU Global Scholar Lecture Series: Tyler Cowen "The Future of Education in the Global Economy"

If I can get a resounding round of applause for Dr. Cowen. Thank you for the introduction. Today's event will have two parts. At the beginning, I will give a short talk on education, but then most of our time I will respond to your questions. So all of you have an exercise which you must complete in the next 10 minutes. You have paper, you have pencil. You must write down one question. And you will pass them all up, and then I will take the questions. And in the second part of the presentation, I will try to address your questions. You can ask me questions on anything you would like. No restrictions. And I will do my best. To address those questions. Okay, is that clear? Yes. So by the time my talk is over, I will have you all pass forward your questions. First, let me say how honored I am to be here, and in a way, how shocked I am to be here. You may have seen from my bio that I am myself a Mason alum at the undergraduate level. So I actually started at George Mason in 1980, which is a long time ago, obviously. And when I started at George Mason, the campus was basically one block of buildings. It was about 5 buildings and a few thousand students. And the economics department, it had no building. So they rented a house and they put everyone in a house. And if you wanted to eat, you would go to the kitchen in this house and cook some food. Because the school was so small, you could walk from one end of the school to the other in less than 2 minutes. Today, one end of the campus is here, where El Songo, technically, and the other in Fairfax, Arlington. Prince William, and it's a school of 33,000 students. It does very well in the rankings. It's at number 1 up and coming now from U.S. News and World Report. We've had 2 Nobel laureates, and for me it's been a great, great place to work. And sometimes people ask me, does it feel funny that you studied at this school and then later you teach there? But it doesn't. It's such a totally different, larger, more dynamic place. I can still see see the old buildings and feel nostalgia. But to me, it's just a miracle that now we have George Mason in Korea. So most of all, thank you all for participating and studying or maybe just visiting with us. We are very grateful for your support. Now let me say just a bit about the economics of education. And you might ask, well, what does an economist what economists have to say about education. There are many ways of studying or thinking about education, but I'd like to focus on just some economic angles. But keep in mind, these are not the only sides of the issue. So when an economist thinks about education, he or she usually connects education to labor markets. So if there's a problem, the economist doesn't just look at the college or the university. The economist looks at the labor market. So let me give you a very simple example. If you take American students with a 4-year degree from a mainstream college or university— 4-year degree, the ones who finish— Not lawyers, not MBAs, not medical doctors, just 4 years. And if you compare their salaries in 2 years, the first year, 1999, 15 years ago. The second year is now, last year, today, 15 years later. Here's the amazing thing. In 1999, the average pay for a 4-year graduate was higher, 9% higher than it is today. So that means that over the last 15 years in my country, college graduates have seen their opportunities get worse. This to me is a startling comparison. It is sad. It is tragic. This is America. We are supposed to be a country country always making progress. But yet, the wage offers are getting worse. Before I continue with that analysis, let me just make an aside. That George Mason, the wage offers for George Mason students are not getting worse. So if you're thinking of going to George Mason or you go, this does not apply to you. Our school actually gets the best wage offers of any school in Virginia. And they have gone up consistently. So that's the good news. But that's not really my talk. I just wanted— if some of you are worried, George Mason has done pretty well. I'm talking about the average for the whole country. But here's my thesis. When the wage offers are going down, most colleges and universities are going to have a big problem no matter what. Because in some ways their product is worthless. Even if the school does everything right, a lot of these schools, their product is worthless. So this is creating financial problems at a lot of US colleges and universities. So let me explain the nature of these financial problems. Just a little more clearly. I'm not talking about Harvard or Princeton. They have a lot, lot, lot of money. They have so much money sometimes they don't know what to do with it. I'm talking about typical schools. Typical schools over the last 20 years have expected, have counted on their ability to raise tuition every year. 5%, 6%, 7%, 7%. Probably you all know this. If you raise tuition 7% every year, that means tuition doubles basically every 7 to 8 years. And what we've seen in the US is tuition just goes up, up, up without stopping. We talk sometimes about healthcare cost inflation, things that get more expensive. But the worst inflation in the United States in terms of price of any major item has actually been higher education. So here's what happened with a lot of these typical colleges and universities. They have grown to expect that the price of tuition can go up every year. 5%, 6%, 7%. Not 1%, not a little, but a lot. So they have made their financial plans on this basis, under the expectation that every year students will pay more. This, in my view, has been a huge mistake because there are some products where every year you might pay more. If I look at my iPhone, each new iPhone, it gets better. Not always a lot better, but it gets better. So maybe, maybe I'm willing to pay more. I'm not even sure. Like the first one was pretty good. Second one was a lot better. Third one like a little better. iPhone 6, do I need iPhone 6? No. I have like 4. I'm sticking with 4. And that's an iPhone, which is totally awesome and always getting better. It's not getting that much better. But let's say the iPhone every year got worse. And every year they wanted me to pay 7% more. What would I do with buying new iPhones? At some point I would say, look, this doesn't make sense. I'm not going to upgrade. I might buy some iPhone, but the iPhone business will be in trouble. So higher education is basically in this position. The people who run colleges and universities They made plans which were too big. They built too many buildings. They started too many new programs. They built too many new sports facilities without having all of the money in their treasury. And the plan was, well, we'll pay for this because we are used to raising the price of tuition 5% to 7% every year. But from the side of the students, finally American students, American American families, they are rebelling somewhat. American state government for state schools, they are rebelling somewhat. And people are not willing to pay as much, or the state governments which govern our state schools are not willing to allow these tuition price increases to continue. So in essence, a lot of American colleges and universities, they are overextending extended in economic terms. They had like a kind of bubble. You know, Korea had a kind of bubble in 1996. What happened in 1997? Financial crisis. United States had a bubble in 2006 with real estate. What happened then? Nothing good, right? I would say right now China has had a bubble which is popping. This also will be bad for the Chinese. So some people say higher education is a kind of bubble and we are now seeing a turning point where the prospects for revenue and the tuition which can be charged are clashing. They are not consistent. So schools are having to make cuts. But here's the other difficult economic side of the problem. They find it very hard to control their costs for several reasons. First, a lot of the professors have tenure, and almost all of the expensive professors have tenure. That means you can't fire them. The tradition is you cannot cut their wages, right? The biggest expense is the professors. You're stuck with them for better or worse. Let's hope they're good, right? George Mason is stuck with me. As long as I do not commit a felony and I show up and teach and do what I'm supposed to, they are stuck with me. That's one issue. Hard to control costs. Think of the other costs of the university. At George Mason, it's 33,000 students. That's like a city, a small city. We need power, we need water, right? We need vehicles to clear the snow. It's very hard to limit those costs. You cannot run George Mason University and say, "Oh, we're short of money, we're going to turn off the air conditioner." What's the summer like in Fairfax? Some of you know, right? It's a lot like the summer in Seoul. A lot of our weather is just like your weather. Like back home, our weather, your weather, Every year it's the same, it's great. But the summer's hot, spring is hot, September is hot. So schools find it hard to control a lot of their costs. So when cuts have to come, it's really hard to find the money. So I think the future of American higher education over the next 10 years, it will mean a lot of adjustments mostly for economic reasons. Many of those adjustments will be sudden or almost violent or they will be painful because small parts of the budget will bear most of the impact of this disconnect between revenue and expectations. And every school more or less has the same set of plans. One plan is, we can't raise tuition this year, we're going to do it next year. The other plan is we'll take in more students. It's not a bad plan. Taking in more students is actually a good plan. I should add it's a plan George Mason has succeeded with. We now have many more students than we did 10 years ago. And a lot of them are out of state paying higher rates of tuition. A lot of them are from other countries. We have many students from China. This is all great. But US colleges as a whole, they cannot all take in that many more students. You can get more from abroad, from other countries. But a lot of smaller schools especially, they don't have the capacity. Or if you're from China and you want to study in the US, then you have a choice. You can study at George Mason, 33,000 students. Large numbers of Chinese, lots of good Chinese food nearby, and you are 30 minutes from our nation's capital in beautiful Northern Virginia. Or you can go to a small school in Nebraska in a town of 7,000 people where the school has 1,200 students. There's no Chinese food around. And it's a 9-hour drive to Denver, Colorado. If you're from China, which of those are you going to prefer? Probably George Mason or some other school in a big city where you can, say, speak more Chinese or have more Chinese friends. So some schools can take in more students and that will work. But American schools as a whole, they cannot all do this as a plan. So I think what we are seeing in our country, we're starting to see some schools go bankrupt, the weaker schools. Some of these are the for-profit universities. They're not always that good. They charge a lot of money. Those are going under, they're going bankrupt, actually in fairly large numbers. There are some standalone law schools and business schools which are going bankrupt because they're not diversified. I know people in the field of law who tell me they think over the next 10 years it could be the case that as many as a third of American law schools disappear. When they say a third, they don't mean Yale, UVA, Northwestern, Berkeley, Harvard, not, not, not those places, of course not. All the places you have heard of will be fine. But the smaller schools with lower ratings, probably they will disappear, or at least they will shrink dramatically. Even at law schools which are very successful, often the size of the entering class is shrinking by about 20%. And why is that? Don't think the law school Do you think the law schools have done something wrong? Not for the most part. It has to do with the job market, the economic perspective. Lawyers today do not have the same opportunities they had 10 years ago. So the amount of money you could earn as a lawyer, the kind of job you could expect to get in the United States was better 10 years ago for most people. Again, the top schools are different. If you come out of Harvard ranked number one, you will get the best job in the world today, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, whenever. But typical law schools, a lot of them are shrinking by about 20%, and that is because the economy is shifting. A lot of the jobs that used to be done by lawyers are now being done by a mix of computers and legal assistants. Legal assistants don't have a law law degree. They didn't pay all that money. They didn't go into debt. But they're smart people. And you know what? They know how to use Google, believe it or not. And they sit down— you sit down a smart person with Google, it's amazing what they can do. And they do a lot of the work of lawyers without receiving those high lawyer wages. So the partners still get a lot of money, the top students, top of the class from Harvard, but there's been this contraction. So the key question for me is how will US education, higher education respond to this partial contraction? And we don't know yet. One thing I think many schools will do is start up a greater component for online education. So online education, you can imagine schools creating websites, electronic portals, programs, resources you can work with online. They're provided to anyone who pays. You give up the classroom experience, but over time I think the price for online work will be much cheaper. So here I'm speculating, but imagine that say a state university had two kinds of classes and two prices. You had the regular class with the regular price. And then you had an online class at half the price. And furthermore, for an online class, you know, at George Mason we have these classes, everyone hates them. Do you know when they're held? They're held Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 8 AM. No one wants to teach them. No one wants to take them. In my opinion, a lot of people would be happy to pay half the price and do the online class instead of the 8 AM class. So I think this will happen. Now many people say in-class is better. You get to see the professor, you get to talk to the professor, you sit with the other students, maybe you pay better attention. It's not as easy to start texting. You know, probably all that is true. So I don't think most schools will let students do all of their work online because you would miss out on a lot. But if you imagine schools trying to be more economical, just letting students do, say, 10%, 15% of their classes online, that would be a big change. And this will help some schools a lot, but also hurt other schools. So there's a big difference with online classes. Once you have created online materials, everyone can take that class, anyone in the world. So say I create an online class, which I've done in the past. The materials for my online class, the most successful video I created has been viewed by over 300,000 people. How many people sit in my class when I lecture? The biggest class I ever taught was about 200, and typically a Mason class is less than 30, which is good, but we— I have taught a class of about 200. That's nothing compared to 300,000. So if you have an online class and you can charge people, you can charge the whole world You can charge people from Georgia, from California, from New York, from India, maybe from China if the censors allow it, from Korea of course. So I think with online education, the schools that do it the best will have a huge market and take in a lot of money. And the schools that don't do it well will lose. Because their students will take online material, say from George Mason, Arizona State, Georgia Tech. So you're going to have a small number of big winners, the schools that master online. And then a lot of the other schools, they'll find that online competition makes their problem harder. Say you're that small school in Nebraska, small number of students, your online offerings are probably not so good. Your students start saying, "Hey, can I take my economics online with George Mason for half the price?" At first you might say, "No, we won't allow it." But competition means over time I think most schools will have to allow this. So online education will make the price lower. It will make a lot of things more competitive. I don't think it will ever replace the classroom. It may replace the Monday, Wednesday, Friday 8 AM classroom, but most of college will still be about going to class. But again, imagine 10 or 15% of this market goes online, becomes cheaper, more competitive, but with the revenue returns much more centralized. And that's what I think we will see in higher education. Some really big winners. A bunch of pretty big losers. And I hope, and you know, in my role as professor, what I would like to do is to see George Mason be one of those winners, essentially. I'm very dedicated to my school. It's been a part— I haven't been at George Mason every year of my life, believe it or not. But since I was 17, 18 years old, it's been a big part of my life. Most years. 34 years. I went away to graduate school at Harvard. I lived in Germany. I lived in New Zealand. I did other things. I taught at University of California. But the last 34 years, most of it I've spent with George Mason. So, I mean, that's really my closing point. But I just hope that my connection to George Mason and my investment in it you know, maybe as an example because it's been very good for me and I'm very enthusiastic about my future there. And I'm very happy to see that in this increasing competitive clash, George Mason is actually doing pretty well in terms of the salaries of its students, the jobs they get. It's, I think, the most international school in the entire United States. So if you walk into the cafeteria, it feels like walking into the United Nations. I mean, basically, I'm a white guy, right? This is obvious. If I walk into the cafeteria at George Mason, there are hardly any white guys. Like maybe one-fifth white guys. The other people from all over, every place. Not just like 2 or 3 places, like, oh, we have a lot of students from India or a lot of students from Mexico. No, almost every country in the world, except maybe for like small islands, is pretty well represented at George Mason. And this also I'm proud of. There are schools you can go to, this is true at Harvard. You go to Harvard and everyone at Harvard is upset because there's not enough diversity. And they talk about, you know, what can we do to have more diversity? I mean, that's a healthy attitude, I think. But Harvard actually isn't that diverse. It tries very hard artificially to be diverse. It succeeds not that much. Most kids who go to Harvard are rich. In this way, they're not diverse at all. There's Asians, there's Americans, there's African Americans, Indians. 40 Koreans in an average Harvard entering class. But for the most part, their parents are rich, with a few exceptions. And they belong to a kind of common class from each of their countries. George Mason, you have a lot of people from wealthy families, but it's a truly mixed environment. There's true interaction, true diversity. And for me, that's another big plus of being there. Anyway, now you need to pass— forward the questions you have written. And with the rest of my time, I will address those to the best of my abilities. First question— and I promise I will not skip any on purpose— how did you get to where you are right now? I took Korean Air Flight 607. But I think you meant something a little different from that. I would say this. My philosophy is that in life you should have a passion and a calling. And for me, that passion and calling has been economics. So I have worked very hard at economics. Uh, for a long time. I actually started reading economics at a very young age. I was, I think, age 13. And by the time I was 14, I decided I wanted to be a professor. I thought, this is the best job in the whole world. People pay you to read, write, and teach, and talk about ideas, and interact with other people. And you even get to fly to Seoul, Korea and give talks. To me, this is awesome. It's not a way to become a millionaire, but if you do it well, you will always be comfortable. You will have enough money. So I thought this is just a fantastic opportunity, and I really threw as much effort as I could into trying to be an economist. And I still try to work as hard as I can. In this sense, I feel like an honorary Korean. Because America, the work ethic, a lot is very strong, a lot is very weak. But I've always tried to stick with the very strong work ethic. So I'm not sure that answers your question, but at least it addresses it. Next question. If online education is getting popular in the future, only one economist will survive eventually. What do I have to do as a regular professor? I'm not going to say who that's from. I'm not so pessimistic for a few reasons. First, there will be more than one class. If you look right now, how many economics textbooks are there? There's actually about You have 50 textbooks to choose from, but I would say no more than 10 of them are really popular. So say there are 10 textbooks. The textbook has not put the professor out of business, and there's more than one, there's 10. But the other difference is, I think, most students want a real professor. Not all students. I think some students, they're in the military, they will do online. Maybe they're working mothers, who cannot get to school. Maybe they're disabled. Maybe they just don't like to leave the house. Maybe they hate the 8 AM class. Maybe they just love computers. Maybe they want to experiment. So I think a, a much bigger chunk of the market will be online. And that will hurt some professors. But I think most of the market will remain face-to-face. Consider our event here. George Mason could have said to me, "Tyler, get on Skype," and there'd be some, like, Skype screen here, and there'd be this big picture of my face talking at you, and you think, "What's the difference?" But it's actually much less effective. I'm not sure why, but somehow we as biological beings, we are programmed to respond to other people being there right in front of us, being vivid, you know, feeling something, moving around. It sounds a little arbitrary, but I know it's true. Like if you're ever, say, in California, you're in Hollywood, and Brad Pitt walks by, George Clooney. Once my daughter and I, we were in New York, we saw George Clooney. Or rather, she did. I didn't. I was in some economics-induced fog. She was excited. I never said to her, look, you've seen George Clooney before on a movie screen. No, she saw him. So I think in-person teaching will never go away. There'll be more online that will increase the total number of students. It will lower the demand, I think, for the worst professors, but the exciting professors can compete against the computer. In my view. We'll see. If 3 years from now I come back here out of work, you'll know what happened to me. Next question. Recently, Chinese educators established Confucius institutions in Western countries, including the US. Teaches Chinese cultures and subjects in Chinese style. It seems like they are a good education system because Western students can learn Eastern culture without visiting there. However, there are criticisms that these systems restrict students' freedom of speech. What do you think about this issue? Very good question. I would say a few things. First, the best way to experience China is to go there. Nothing against any institute, Confucius or otherwise, but it cannot really teach you what China is like. Probably a lot of you have been, but if not, believe me, you're close. To fly from Fairfax, Virginia to here, it's tough. It's a long ways. It's strenuous. China is— well, most of China is a little further. But you're here, China's close, absolutely go there if you can and try to go to different places, not just Beijing and Shanghai. China now is one of the world's two largest economies, depending how you measure it. So one of the best things you can do for your education, no matter what your field, is go to China and get out, get out and about, Go out, try to see things, don't just, you know, stay in your hotel or hang out with American or Korean friends. Now, do Confucius Institutes restrict freedom of speech? You know, the Chinese government tells those institutes what messages they are supposed to convey. And of course, it's pro-China and it's biased. But frankly, as an educator, this doesn't bother me as much as it bothers other people. I think if you have a Chinese government trying to push clumsy propaganda on people, people will see through it. People will see the lack of openness, and most people will not be persuaded. So I tend to think most American universities should allow the Confucius Institutes. They should make it clear to students who is behind the institute and that the messages may be biased. But the frank truth is most of the messages we hear in life, in the university, they are biased anyway. If you go to most American schools, a big chunk of your professors are American, or maybe they're foreigners, but they might be foreigners from countries that don't like China, right? It's possible. So most propaganda in the US right now is not pro-Chinese.

Chinese.

In fact, it's anti-Chinese. Someone did a study, like, mentions of China in the news media. When bad things happen in China, there's lots of articles about it. When good things happen in China, there are not so many articles about it. So the US already has a huge bias when it comes to China. And if the Chinese government tries to do something to reverse that, even though I don't agree with a lot of things these Confucius Institutes say. My inclination is to think it's resources for the university. Make sure it's transparent. Let people make up their own minds. People want to fall in love with China because the Chinese government says we're always right. You know, that's part of the marketplace of ideas. I say let it rip. Just make sure opposing viewpoints are available as well. What do you think about Korean government not allowing American schools because it's not Korean school? It's a very good question. You can think of this as a form of protectionism. So a lot of countries, not just Korea, in fact most countries— go to Europe, a lot of Europe— Harvard or George Mason cannot just buy a building and open up shop and call it George Mason of Deutschland, right? You cannot do that. In my opinion, the world would be a better, more competitive place if that were easier to do. It's what economists call competition. The quality would go up. The better schools would attract more people. In countries where the price is high— in Korea, the price of education is relatively high. Compared to many other countries, the price would go down. So my inclination is to think we would have better education if we allowed more competition. But I would just stress, please do not blame Korea. Most governments in the world do the same thing. They want to protect their domestic institutions. It's no big surprise. And you can think of, you know, some of the recent campuses abroad including Songdo. As bringing more competition. And this is a good thing. Next question. What do you think about Korean education? There are several levels of Korean education. But mostly I think it's pretty awesome. If you look at test scores, as you know, PISA scores, Korea ranks very highly. And I'd also like to speak against this myth In my opinion, it's wrong, this view that South Koreans do well on tests, but they're not creative or innovative. I think that is absolutely completely wrong. If you look at, say, creative economy in South Korea— music, cinema, painting, sculpture, some fashion, design, stylishness, being cool, Gangnam Style video— Food, I think. There's fantastic food here. There's so many small eateries with 3 tables. Maybe it's run, you know, by a grandmother. She doesn't speak English. There's no menu. You go in. You just hope for the best. It's going to cost 6,000 won and it's a culinary adventure, in my opinion, often better than what you get in Paris for $100 US, in my opinion. So I think Korea now right now is incredibly innovative. You cannot move from being a poor country, as Korea was in 1960, to being a fully developed country without creatively and innovatively solving problems along the way basically every day. Now, that said, Korean higher education I don't think is as good as Korean primary and secondary education. So you have SKY, these three institutions, But for a country of Korea's size and wealth, the very top institutions in South Korea are in general not as good as a lot of their peers in other countries. And the number of institutions South Korea has placed in the top 400 in general is considered a disappointment. So I'm not sure why this is the case and I certainly don't know how to fix it. I have no personal experience at South Korean universities. But I think the system has been strongest at lower levels. And at higher levels, it's okay, but it could be a lot better. Next question. Payment for graduates, 1999, 9% higher than now. Wage offers are getting it done. Do you know kimchi? That's the actual question. Here's a very important point. George Mason, the main campus is in Fairfax. Right next to Fairfax is Annandale. Annandale is one of the largest Koreatowns in the United States. So in Annandale, we have about 40 Korean restaurants. And they're not as good as Seoul, but they're actually pretty good. So the reality of my life is I have kimchi much more often than I have hamburger. I have kimchi at least once a week. I have been eating kimchi for 20 years, and for me it is totally normal. And I show up in Seoul and people pass me kimchi like it's something strange from Mars, and I pick it up and eat it. I don't even look at it. And they're shocked. But last year, I was shocked. They took me to Busan to a sushi place. And they had this fish, or maybe octopus. And they chopped it up. But it wasn't dead yet. And they told me to eat it. And I did. But I like kimchi better. Next question. A lot of college and university makes international students pay twice or more tuition fee. How do you think about it? I think this will never change. Ever. You know, from my talk, these schools, most of them need the money. So schools, if anything, they're getting tougher. Like some students, they go to a school, they live there for a year, they try to say, 'I'm in-state now.' Everyone does this. Schools are getting much tougher. They like find some third uncle who lives on the other side of the state, they rent a PO box, you know, file some strange tax return. I'm in-state. Schools are cracking down. You know, I don't think it's fair, but it's a reality. And the reality is this: American colleges and universities are run at the level of individual states, not the federal government for the country as a whole, but each state— Virginia, Maryland, California, New York. And those governments, they want to favor people in their state. Of course it's not fair. But it's just their basic reality. I mean, take the city of Seoul. Does the mayor of Seoul want to spend a lot of Seoul's money on Busan or vice versa? No. Is that fair? Not completely. Is it a normal reality? Yes. Is it going to change? No. Same answers here. Why did you choose George Mason? It's a good question. Keep in mind, I chose George Mason twice. I chose going there as a student and much later in 1989, I chose to return there as faculty. So two different answers. Why did I choose it as a student? It was an environment where I knew a lot of professors would work with me personally on a one-to-one or small numbers basis. Also, I was from New Jersey, which is near— I grew up right outside of New York City, and at that point in time, I was sick of the Northeast. New Jersey, especially then, was sort of polluted and dirty, very industrial. It was like US manufacturing center. Before Korean competition changed some of that. And I was sick of the Northeast. I had good— a lot of good offers to go to many schools, but I just wanted a change. I wanted to go somewhere new, take a chance, and invest in myself in a different way. I've always been glad I went. Maybe it wasn't even completely rational. I wanted to live in the South, the state of Virginia, live near Washington. And it was also a lot of fun. Do you acknowledge that George Mason and GMU Korea is increasing their tuition every year? GMU Korea, I don't know. I have no idea what the tuition is or was or will be.

I just—

sorry, I cannot say. George Mason, in my opinion, has stopped increasing its tuition. So I don't think we will see a significant tuition increase at George Mason anytime soon. That's an opinion. I'm not certain of that. We'll see. I could be proven wrong. But that is my expectation. What are some efforts that George Mason is doing to improve their education? These are really quite numerous. You know, for the last 2 years, we've had a new president, President Cabrera. And he is a very international person. In fact, President Cabrera is from Spain. One of the neat things about George Mason, our president is from Spain and our provost is from Taiwan. So we have international orientation built in at the ground level. So we are becoming more international in just about every way possible. The students we recruit, what we teach, we're also becoming a lot more specialized. So we're taking programs like our MBA. We used to teach like a big general MBA. Now we're breaking it into different parts. So you can get like an MBA in cybersecurity. So we think the job market is demanding more specialized skills. So the school as a whole is trying to give people those more specialized skills. If you go to law school at George Mason, to give you an example, we have much more emphasis on law and economics. So areas like securities law, for instance, antitrust law, communications law, we put more emphasis on, we try to get people specialized backgrounds in. A lot of law schools, people go and they think they're all going to be in court like in the movies arguing a case to send a criminal to jail. It's not what most lawyers do. The reality of most legal work is you do some kind of economics and we teach it that way. In our economics program, which of course is what I know best, we make a concerted effort not just to teach economics to our students, but to teach them all to be good communicators, to be all good writers. I'm not saying we always succeed, but we realize an economics education is tightly interconnected with a humanities education and the ability to communicate. At the graduate level, We make sure that all of our students have teaching experience, have published papers, and we train them very explicitly. We put in real time teaching them how to teach so they can get better jobs when they're done. Other schools do not do this. As far as I know, this is completely unique to George Mason University. Our actual faculty spend time teaching all of our PhD students how to be good teachers. There's a lot more George Mason is doing to improve education there. But again, it's a big school and I'm just one person. I only see some sides of it. There's entire sides of the school I never see. So that's a good thing. If I knew everything that was going on, it would mean there wasn't that much going on. How does your work impact you? It keeps me really busy. Like most nights I work to about 10:30 PM. It means I travel a lot. This is my third time to Korea in 3 years. I think the future of a lot of things is here in Asia, but in Korea specifically. It means I read, you know, 7 or 8 hours a day and keep up with a lot of different things. So those are some of the ways it impacts me. It gives me a sense of the world as a whole. The world's changing very rapidly. You can't ignore that if you do economics. Yes. Some areas, like if you teach language. You know, my wife used to be a Russian professor. She's from Russia. The Russian language doesn't change that much. You teach it the same way every year. Economics, you cannot teach the same way every year. So it changes you. By graduating from GMU, what kind of job offers can I get? I am a management student. Well, first of all, Well, I don't know. It depends who you are. The important thing is to cultivate people who can write you good letters, who can make phone calls for you, to have some kind of network or mentors who will push for you and help get you jobs and who have connections. So if you are good at doing that, you will get a very good job. Now, we should be helping you to do that. If we are not, as at GMU, helping you to do that, you should go speak to someone and complain. That person isn't me. But that's really the important thing with the management education. Are you developing mentors and people who can vouch for you? If the answer is yes, you're probably doing pretty well. If no, you need to do something different right away. It's not just about classes. You can have A's in all your classes. People in the world don't really care. They want to— See that you have mentors. What is the biggest challenge, personal or academic, you had while attending George Mason? It's a good question. I had some professors who were pretty boring. Believe it or not, there are some. And, you know, I did well in those classes, but I think I actually would have done just as well with the online version of the class. We didn't have the internet back then. But some of my classes were not as good as they could be. The school treated me very well. At that time, I lived off campus. So I never wanted to live on campus. This is actually another reason why I chose George Mason. I'm like a very nerdy guy and I like to study a lot. And the notion that I would live in a dorm and there would be all this noise and people having parties, even when I was young, I hated this idea. And at George Mason, I knew I could live in an apartment, live like an adult, spend more time with adults. GMU now has a lot of on-campus life. It's changed. We have very large dorms. They're pretty good. They're better than they had been. But living off campus is a different experience. And in some ways you don't get to know as many people as you do when you live on campus. So that would be another challenge. Are you married? Here we go. I wear it on my right hand. It's unusual for Americans. Because my left hand, I have a fold of skin. The ring does not fit. Very small fold, but it means it won't fit here. My wife is a lawyer. She works for the federal government at the Securities and Exchange Commission. And she used to be a Russian professor. She was born in Moscow in the old Soviet Union. And she is here with me now in Seoul, though she didn't come to this talk. And there is one daughter, Yana. She is age 24. She has a good job as a manager. And she is very persuasive. So I am optimistic about her future. She's not a numbers person, she's not a tech person, but she's doing very well. Do you have any pets? Nope. I'm here. My wife is here. Where should the pet be? We would like to have pets, but we have no pets. What do you think about the future economy of Korea? There are many different angles to this. Mostly I'm optimistic. You're growing at a rate of 3.3% year to year at a time when the global economy is pretty slow. The fantastic thing about Korea is just how worried Koreans are about this. You talk with people in government, in business, they say, "My goodness, things are terrible. We need to prepare for the future." This is awesome. The countries where people worry are exactly the countries where people don't need to worry that much. I would wish the worrying of the Koreans would be done by the French and the Italians. They need to worry. I think there are 2 or 3 main challenges here. First, Korea underutilizes the labor of its women. So if you look at the gender pay gap across OECD nations, it's larger in Korea than any other OECD nation. And if you look at the rate at which women work after age 30, it is lower than Korea than in virtually all other OECD nations. Korea and Japan together have this problem. So Korea has all this talented female labor and it's wasting a lot of it. Korean jobs need to be more flexible. Another big issue here is a lot of the service sector has fairly low productivity. Productivity. So Korean economy in a way has two parts. There are the big companies which export, you know, the chaebol and others, and they pay good wages and they're in pretty good shape. And then the much smaller firms, their wages are about half the level of wages at the chaebol. So again, you have these two tiers and people compete very hard to get into the top tier. Korean economy needs to be more integrated, be less tiered, be less hierarchical, have better wages, better productivity in the service sector, It would help to have a bit more of a venture capital market here and a lot of dynamic small startups. This is possible. It's not yet quite the reality. I think Korea actually will manage this. But I would say overall Korea has some nice problems. Compare Korea to most of the Eurozone or to the Middle East or most of the rest of the world, Korea is one of the top economies. And looking forward, it has strong fundamentals, great education, great work culture, great culture of business, a lot going for it. There is this issue to the north, younger brother to the north. No one knows how that will develop. Obviously, that's— one needs to have some caution there. Very hard to predict. But for the most part, future economy of Korea to me looks really pretty good. Do you believe that Samsung has possible potential to be a world competitive corporation? It is already. Samsung is crushing its competitors. Look at Apple and Samsung. Who's winning that battle?

Apple.

Apple.

Apple.

Samsung. Samsung.

I think Samsung.

If you look at numbers of phones, for instance, Samsung is beating Apple. Apple had a head start. Samsung is catching up. I think it's fair to say Apple has like the cooler product. Like I bought Apple and I tried, you know, I tried a Samsung phone. It wasn't bad, but I prefer Apple iPhone. But overall Samsung is one of the world's most productive, most effective corporations. You talk to Koreans, They all think it's doing terribly. This is awesome. This is like Koreans worrying the economy is growing 3.3%. It's the right attitude. So keep it up. As long as you all keep on answering Apple, Samsung will be fine. I say. How would you rate GMU on the ability of keeping its money? From 1 to 10 with 1 being worst and 10 being best. I'm not quite sure what you mean by keeping money. I would say in terms of financial stability and financial future, George Mason is in better shape than most other state universities. I would put it in the top 10. Is George Mason in the same financial state as Harvard and Princeton and MIT? Of course not. We are not close. But if you compare us to peer universities, good state universities from other states, I say we're in the top 50. Exactly where, I would have to know more about all those other schools. So my answer is not quite as exact as what you're demanding. But financially, we're in pretty good shape. Would you prefer to teach a larger class or a smaller class with fewer students? I like to have the variation. You know, you can have too few students. One year I taught at University of California. It was my first job. I taught a class and there were only 2 students. This was bad. It was bad for them too. They felt I was always looking at them. I was. And then the question— no one can sit in the back row. And if I ask a question, they have to be ready. This was kind of depressing. I think a lot of classes, there's a kind of sweet spot, 15 to 25 students is ideal. Depends. I like variation. I do enjoy large classes. I've talked to very large groups of people, sometimes a few thousand people in rooms like so big they need to put you on screen like Rolling Stones or something. My favorite is maybe around 20. Would you prefer students to go to Georgia George Mason Korea, the main campus at Fairfax? I wouldn't say I have a personal preference. I would say I'm very glad Mason is in Korea. And I hope to visit more. So just for purely selfish reasons, because I like kimchi and I like Korea, I would like to see, you know, a big presence here. I think it's good for Korea, good for George Mason. More questions? Many students in Korea have demonstrated against the Ministry of Education. To reduce tuition fees. This was somehow effective for the first time in a few years. Colleges reduced tuition fees by as much as 3% recently. Do you think this can possibly affect the US colleges as well? Absolutely. There is now a growing political movement in the United States, its strongest in Texas, the belief that a state university should not charge more than $10,000 a year for in-state education. I think in the next 2 to 3 years we will see schools adopting this target of $10,000. It's a very difficult target to meet. If you know anything about the budgets of a large university, to educate a student for $10,000 is not something any decent school can do right now. I think schools will find a way to make this work. And I think you will see a thin segment of state universities offering this $10,000 product within a few years in the US. Will most do it? No. Will a bunch of them do it? Yes. How well will it work? I'd say we don't know yet. How cheap can you make it? We really don't know until you try. So— but we have a similar movement. How do universities use students' tuitions. They pay me. Again, the biggest expense is labor. Faculty, administrators, there's physical plant which also costs something. But labor is really the big item. So a lot of schools have hired more administrators instead of hiring more faculty. And in my opinion, that's not a good idea. Do you think some of the universities are wasting the money? Yes. And the most common way it is wasted is by hiring the wrong types of labor, I would say. That I've covered. Is it really a big crisis of US education? Isn't the difference between people with and without university graduation certificate bigger than the tuition fee? It's a very good question and this is true. So there's two comparisons you have to make. The first is, what's the difference between getting a degree and not getting a degree? Like just finishing high school. And that's a really big difference. So it is worth it for a lot of people to go to college. But there's a second question. It's not a question of the difference. It's a question of the absolute absolute level. So what is the absolute level of your wage if you finish college? And that is lower today than it was in 1999. So it's true the value of college in a way has gotten worse, but the value of only high school has gotten even more worse. So the current marketing pitch of a lot of colleges— this isn't how they put it, but this is what it boils down to— is something like, You'd better come to us. We're worth less than ever before, but your alternatives are even more worse. That is not an inspiring message. Now again, George Mason University is not in this position, which is great. But a lot of schools are. Ultimately, that's their message. We're not as valuable as we used to be, but your alternatives are falling apart even faster. Who would ever be inspired by that? I say no one. Recently there's been a lot of controversy over the economist Thomas Piketty. He argued if we take a lot of tax from the rich— I don't read all of the writing. What's your opinion of his claim? Piketty's book is very interesting, but I don't think he has the right theory of inequality. We can all recognize inequality is going up in the US, also in Korea. But in Piketty's story, inequality is basically about capital and labor. Capital getting more money, labor getting less money. If you look at the data, both in my country and in Korea, the real change is not between capital and labor, but different kinds of labor. Some kinds of labor getting more, other kinds of labor getting less. So I think he has the wrong theory. In Piketty's theory, basically interest rates, the rate of return on capital is very high. But in Korea they just cut the interest rate to 2% yesterday. In the United States the 10-year interest rate fell to about 2% a day or two ago. So right now interest rates are not high. His theory is you get some capital, you invest it, you just get these huge returns pouring in without risk. And you get richer and richer and richer. But in today's world, rates of return on capital are often low unless you're some kind of exciting or important entrepreneur. And a lot of the change is across different types of labor income. So I think he's identified key issues, but I think he has basically the wrong model. I wrote a long review of Piketty's book. If you Google my name and his, it will get you to the review, 2,500 words. A lot more detail than what I just said. You touched upon college graduates having a worse time than in 1999. This is discouraging to hear. What are the markets you believe that will be in demand in the future? I mentioned marketing. I think also management. Management need to be on site, cannot be outsourced, computers cannot do it. Good managers have seen rising pay been out for quite a while. But one added point I'd like to make, you know, the job market is getting worse in U.S., but the story in Korea is somewhat different. So I don't know who wrote this question, but if you're planning on entering the Korean market, it is not the same as the U.S. market. Korea has been growing at a higher rate and there are more opportunities here in some ways. So just be careful that what I said is the U.S.— and it's true for England also. It's true for a number of countries, but Korea is somewhat of a different story. In Asia, you know, the slowest job market of the wealthy countries in terms of pay maybe has been Taiwan. Also in Hong Kong you see some wages falling in real terms. Japan is a complicated situation, but I'd say they have a lot of troubles. They have high debt. And their population is shrinking. Korea is in a better economic place than these other countries if we do a comparison. How is GMU prepared to face the globalized world? First, our student body is more globalized than just about any other student body. Going forward, those people are our alumni, our donors, our support network. Globalization is built in. Second, GMU created a new contract this last December with a private firm to help us market George Mason University more effectively to other countries. So in terms of what is our target audience, we are deliberately trying to make George Mason better for people from other countries. Third, if people come to George Mason, Fairfax, Arlington, Prince William, they are living in one of the most global globalized parts of the world. People from everywhere live there. There is an embassy from everywhere, literally every country. There is a cultural community of some kind from literally every country. We have 3 airports within an hour's drive, which is awesome. We are connected by train to New York and Boston. We're right by the nation's government. Washington, D.C. in some ways has overtaken New York city in being America's intellectual capital, being a fun, exciting place to be, in my opinion. That makes us a spot of global attraction. Plus, our top administration, our president, our provost, have a completely global mentality because they are globalized. Now, none of that is a guarantee, right? We still have to execute. But in terms of having fundamentals for globalization, uh, we really look pretty good. One of the best schools in the whole US, I would say. Maybe the best. What is the prospering education major that can contribute to global economy? There's two questions here. They're a little different. One is, what should your job be? And here I'm fond of pushing like management and marketing. But what should your major be? It's a somewhat different question. Just like I said, being a marketing major is not always the best way to learn marketing. Being a business major is not always the best way to learn business. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. You should consider it. But you take Mark Zuckerberg, you know, the Facebook guy. He was a psychology major. And if you think about Facebook, there's a lot of psychology behind it. There's like brilliant programming and some brilliant psychology. So, you know, I'm a fan of being an economics major. Nature, frankly, if I may say so. But I'm also a fan of the humanities. For a world that's changing rapidly, where you need to know how to read and write, you may need to know other languages fluently, you may need to know how to decode or decipher a text, needing to know how to teach yourself new things, needing to learn how to be flexible, a good humanities education is very important for that. And I think today it is undervalued. It does not make sense for everyone to rush to STEM and do science and tech. But most of all, everyone in the world should major in economics. Mass of open online courses increasingly expanding. It includes many prestigious schools. Won't MOOCs eventually shrink the financial status of American education? It's a good question. I've already addressed some related versions of this question. Again, I think face-to-face communication will prove robust. And if you think about what you do in your life, you text people, you may friend them on Facebook, but usually there's a face-to-face element that is highly significant. So the people who solve this problem of online ed, they will not do it by destroying face-to-face. They will somehow integrate online with face-to-face. Like in Korea right now, there are some very important experiments of what's called flipped classroom. You do online at home and then you come into the room and it's more like a tutoring session. It's more like problem solving. It's more like working together in groups. So the future is not you stay at home and do, you know, 4 MOOCs a semester and never see anyone's face. The future is some kind of integration. I don't think we've figured out yet how to do it. But I think actually the status of US education will go up, will reach a lot more people. The US is pretty good at online innovation. We'll have a much bigger presence in India, China, Africa, other parts of the world, Latin America. I think it will be great for US higher education, but only for the institutions which are willing to do it and willing to change somewhat. And that is not everyone. So, it's a long question. Let me see if I can figure it out in parts here. I hear some numbers about pay being lower, tuition being higher, education being a bubble, and the question: did education prices increase because more students tend to take advanced education nowadays? There's a bunch of reasons why prices increased. First, prices were probably probably too low to begin with. It doesn't mean they should have gone up as much as they have, but they started off quite low. Another is we had the student debt bubble. So my government, I would say, guarantees too many student loans. I think also, you know, for a lot of people, college is really fun. So the parents think they're sending their children to have a great future. The children think they're going somewhere that will be really fun. Everyone is all for it. It's a kind of status competition. They don't always look at it too critically. And it's a little hard to say to your kid, "Look, you got into two schools. This school is better, but this other school is cheaper. We're gonna send you to the cheaper school." Probably not that many of you in the room have kids, but I can tell you And you have a kid, if you can at all afford that more expensive school, when the time comes, most American parents will pay that bill and they do not treat shopping for education the way they treat shopping for yogurt. If I see a cheaper yogurt, same flavor, do I buy the cheaper yogurt? Of course. If I see a cheaper school, for our kid just as good, which often is the case, believe me. There are schools with very high tuitions which are not better than cheaper schools. But to say to your kid, we need to save the money, we're sending you to this other place, it's a really tough thing to do. And schools have learned how to take advantage of that. It's sad, actually. In a way, they're like exploiting the family. And they raise the What kind of education do you dream for the future? Uh, the perfect blend of online and face-to-face. My dream is that we solve that problem and figure out the right way to do it and cut the cost of education in half and have all of it in every major language and that you have these online portals combined with individual tutoring and we're more or less teaching the entire world. That's my dream. I actually think this dream will become at least partially a reality. Not in the next year, but, you know, within my lifetime. So I'm very optimistic about education. Here's one about MOOCs. I think I basically answered it. What is the best governmental system in your opinion? It really depends on the country. I would say this, start with your country and ask, is it a success? If your country is a success, probably the best thing you can do is keep the system you have. In my view, South Korea is a success. I know there's talk here about amending the Constitution. I don't know if that's a good idea or not, but the basic fundamentals of South Korean system of government, however frustrated insiders may be, it seems to me they're working pretty well. It's very interesting when you compare the inside perspective and the outside perspective. People who work in politics in Seoul— I spoke to many of them over the last 3 days— they tell me how frustrating everything is, how terrible, special interest groups, different forms of gridlock, people don't agree, the old coalitions are breaking down, the older model of government doesn't work anymore. They have 20 different stories about how terrible things are in South Korean government. And then I go home. My friends in Washington, including my wife, they work for the government. They have all their stories about how terrible things are. And I live near Washington, like I know that these stories are true. But at the end of the day, you look around the global economy and you ask, which are the two economies kind of growing the best? U.S. and Korea. We're not at the top, but we're way up there on the list. We're both free countries. We're both mostly peaceful, not my country in every way, but you know, if you live in Fairfax, you're very safe, schools are very good, a lot of nice parks. So, you know, best system of government, there is no single best system. Think about where you're at. If your country is Russia, Russia is not a successful country, Russia is falling apart. Their current system of government, Putin has dictator is very bad. They need to change it. We'll see what happens there. But our two countries, we're very lucky. We're really very, very lucky. It's no longer true that substantial technological breakthroughs can be achieved by people without formal education, like Michael Faraday. If the US loses a third of its schools falls, as some pessimists think, do you think the US would lose its status as the number one innovator of technology? I would say no. If you think about the tech world, there are a lot of people in the tech world, I mean really a lot, who've either done great things without much formal education or the great things they did did not require their formal education. So Bill Gates is a dropout. I'm not saying, you know, You should all or even any of you drop out. Just saying, the US actually has a history of having great forms of education outside of formal colleges and universities. So if the United States loses a lot of its schools, it's going to lose the worst ones. It's not going to lose Harvard and Princeton or George Mason. And it's going to lose them in part because there are better alternatives, like teaching yourself things online. So I'm very optimistic. US as an innovator, I'm pretty optimistic. There's no close rival for number one. China is not close. They produce a lot of things. That's great. I think in the long run they'll do well. But in terms of innovation, number of Nobel Prizes, China is very, very far behind the US. It's really not even close. Questions? Do you think education should be corrected first before the economy in America will be fixed? It's a brilliant question. First, I mean, neither is ever really going to happen. You know, you never fix an economy. It's always in somewhat of a state of disrepair and chaos. So I think the US will go back to growing 2% a year. Which is pretty good but not great. It's not really a fix. I don't think we'll be like the good old days of the 1950s when we grew 3.5 to 4% a year. I'm not sure we'll ever fix that. It's just harder. You know, the larger you are, the harder it is to grow. So let's say you're learning a topic. Let's say you know nothing about that topic. Like you don't know any words in Arabic. For you to double your knowledge of Arabic, how hard is that? It's not hard. You know one word? I can teach you two. Let's say you know 10,000 words in Arabic. And you've got to double that knowledge. How hard is that? It's a lot harder. So in some ways, growth, I think, just gets harder the richer you get. Online classes. Many Korean students are unhappy with Korean education because they believe it puts too much importance on college reputation when they— more than they do other deciding factors like community or if that school is for them. Do you think this will ever change? It's a very good question. I've heard a lot of talk about this. I'm not sure I know enough about Korean colleges and universities to have a prediction, but my best guess is that it is likely to change because the hierarchical system of Korean universities depends ultimately on a hierarchical structure for the Korean economy. And as Korean economy shifts to smaller firms, less importance for chaebol, more services, less export orientation, less manufacturing, that economy will change, become more decentralized, more diverse, And ultimately, I have no idea how soon, but ultimately the schools will probably follow that same path. That's a guess. It's not really a well-informed opinion, but that's how I would think about it. What will you say about colleges or the government of South Korea who build a college town hoping for future enrollment? I say bravo. —project. But I would say that, wouldn't I? What are some of the adjustments in education and reforms in the USA besides automated courses online? The main thing the US needs is better primary education. Korea has great primary schools for younger people. US lower education is often pretty bad. Some is very good, but it's highly uneven. That's our main problem, not colleges and universities. Third grade, fourth grade, even kindergarten, sixth grade, the bottom third of US schools are pretty terrible. But you know, here's an interesting comparison if you're thinking about US schools. Like Korean students get awesome test scores, right? But actually Korean Americans in America get slightly better test scores than Koreans in Korea. So American schools are in general pretty good. A lot of the problem is in American families who do not value education. In Korea, most families really highly value education. In America, that is not consistently the case. I don't know how to fix that problem. A lot of it is— the problem is not based in the schools. We'll see how that develops. I'm hopeful, but it's hard to predict. Could you comment on the education of South Korea based on their multiculturalism exclusion for students who have parents from other countries? I'm not sure I understand the question. Would whoever asked it care to explain it? You don't have to. Okay, next. What is the connection between the labor market and the automated online courses? Well, look, if all you've done is sit on the sofa and stare at a computer, even if you're a genius, I don't think the labor market will reward that. And that's one reason why professors will stay in business forever. What the labor market rewards is when well-known, credible people— professors, business leaders, others— can vouch for you and say, "I have worked with this person. I recommend them." That's what the labor market rewards, even more than grades in a lot of cases. Now there's just a few minutes left, but if any of you have questions on the questions, I think we can take those now. If anyone wants to raise their hand and ask about what we just covered. Yes?

I have a question that's not related to the previous question. That's fine. I never got a chance to get to you. I don't know how— I guess economically related it is, but recently—

They asked me if I'm married, right?

Yeah, that's true.

It's actually very economically related.

I'm going to hold it far away because it's going to be very loud. Recently Fairfax County Public Schools have been firing a lot of teachers based on budget cuts, and a lot of these teachers are some of the best teachers that Fairfax County has ever seen. And it's all because of tenure and budget cuts, and students are trying so hard to change it. Does this happen in college too? Do professors get laid off and then other professors come in who aren't as qualified? And can students do anything to change that?

Uh, yes, it does happen. I think it's bad that it happens, but at every school I have known this to happen. So the tenure decision is based on several factors, but not just the quality of your teaching. The tenure decision is based first on the quality and impact of your research. And not just your teaching. What can we do to change this? George Mason has done this, by the way. But George Mason and many other schools, they have created separate slots, separate jobs, where tenure is awarded on the basis of teaching only. And those people are supposed to be the best teachers. Generally they are. And they don't have to do research, and they focus really on spending time with the students. Now I think we should do more of that than we have, What we've done so far has worked. But it's absolutely the case you have people who are tremendous teachers that haven't published enough articles. They ought to be able to stay in the system somehow, and they're kicked out and replaced by someone worse. And in my view, this is a great shame. We're starting to change it. We need to change it more. Yes? I can hear you.

You were talking about how the women and men, there's a gender inequality, especially here in Korea.

Yes.

Yes, and you talked about how jobs should be more flexible.

Yes. Could you be a little bit more specific?

Because I wasn't sure what flexible meant.

Well, let me give you an example from the United States. I don't know if Korea is the same, but I think it's a useful example. If you work in the tech field, in most of the tech field, hours are pretty flexible. You can write a computer program at 2 in the morning or at 9 AM. At 2 AM or at 2 PM. Usually they don't care, you need to meet the deadline, but when you do things is pretty flexible. When you look at these sectors with flexible hours, women actually earn about as much as men do. When you look at sectors with inflexible hours, some kinds of factory work, law firms. A law firm expects you to be there very particular hours when the other people are there. And it's not that flexible. You look at those sectors, women earn much less than men in the US. The lesson economists have drawn from this is the way to get women to be earning more, of course, educate them more, eliminate prejudice, all that is all fine and good. But most significantly, try to make as many jobs more flexible as possible, and that will boost the relative pay and relative opportunities of women. I thank you all for coming, and I would just say if I can help you with anything, feel free to email me. Say you met me at Songdo so I remember. My email is online, kikowon@gnu.edu, or just Google my name. I'm not sure I can help you, but if you think I can, please let me know. And I've enjoyed my time in Korea, and again, thank you all for spending your time with George Mason here.