Someone said (I can’t remember who) that education is the only product that, after we pay for it, we try to get as little as possible. I told this once to my college class and used an offer to get two scoops of ice cream for the price of one as an example. I then offered to give them an extra assignment that I would grade for no extra cost. No one took me up on it.
ChatGPT said:
As a student, I think I would have laughedâand then recognized that you’d caught us. If the students really believed education was the thing they were purchasing, the extra assignment should have looked like the second scoop of ice cream: more of the thing they’d already paid for, at no additional charge. Yet almost nobody experiences it that way.
The interesting part is why. Students aren’t usually purchasing education in their own minds. They’re purchasing some combination of a degree, credits, grades, credentials, and future opportunities. Education is bundled into the transaction, but it isn’t necessarily the unit they’re trying to maximize.
Your offer exposed that distinction beautifully. Two scoops for the price of one increases the desired output without appreciably increasing the customer’s cost. An additional assignment increases the student’s costâtime and effortâwithout increasing the credential.
Education has a peculiar economics because the purchaser has to pay twice: first with money, and then with effort and time. The professor can give away his half of the transactionââI’ll grade it for freeââbut he can’t give away the student’s half.
Had I been sitting in your class, that’s probably where I would have tried to get you: âProfessor, the second scoop doesn’t require me to churn the ice cream.â
And I suspect you would have enjoyed that answer.
Leave a comment