Peter Greene read the annual UCLA survey of college freshmen and discovered a depressing fact: the proportion of students planning to major in education has dropped precipitously.

“The percentage of probable education majors stands at 4.2%, the lowest percentage ever since the question was first asked in 1971. And that 4.1% comes at the end of a fifteen-year decline– at the turn of the century, the figure hovered around 11%.” [Just a guess, but I expect that the difference between 4.1 and 4.2 is a typo.]

Now it is possible that future teachers are getting their major in a subject they plan to teach and will go to graduate school for teacher education. But it is also true that future elementary teachers often major in education since they expect to teach many subjects.

But the shrinking enrollments have been reported in both undergraduate and graduate education programs.

Greene writes:

“Many local districts and many states have done their utmost to make teaching as unattractive as it could possibly be. No respect, no autonomy, low pay, no job security, poor work conditions, no control over your professional fate, and treated as if you’re a child. What could be more appealing?

“I keep waiting for Free Market Acolytes to read the writing on the wall. After all, the invisible hand is very clear on this– when people don’t want to buy what you’re selling, when people do want to take your job under the conditions you’ve set, that is a clear sign that you have undervalued the merchandise.

“It has always been an oddity of teacher-related education policy– there is always the presumption that teachers must be teachers, that they cannot choose to be anything else. This is not true. People may choose to be teachers. Or they may choose not to be. Right now, a whole lot of college freshmen choose not to be.

“If you want to buy a Lexus for $7.95 and nobody will sell one to you for that price, that is not a sign of a automobile shortage. If you want to hire a surgeon to cut your grass for $1.50 an hour and nobody will apply for the job, that is not a surgeon shortage. If you want people to become teachers under the current job conditions (and that is a large-ish if because it’s possible that some folks think it would be easier to run education if teachers would all just go away), and fewer and fewer people are biting, that is not the sign of a teacher shortage– it’s a sign that you need to make your job more attractive. This seems obvious to me. We’ll see if anybody in power can figure it out.”

Heckuva job, Arne Duncan! Bill Gates! Eric Hanushek! Raj Chetty! Michelle Rhee! Campbell Brown! Democrats for Education Reform! StudentsFirst! Students Matter! And the rest of the corporate reformers!