Teacher pay

Freakonomics writes about an idea for teacher pay: "What if teachers were paid based on the future income their students make."

It's interesting to see this idea. I wrote about the same idea in a Dagbladet article in 1999".

And I continued: "This would have the interesting consequence that a teacher that encourages his pupils to become stock brokers, can get a better salary than a teacher that gets his pupils to become nurses. And that is good - the society does award stock brokers better than nurses because stock brokers are more productive, doesn't it? But if the teacher himself becomes a role model for his pupils, so that they also become teachers, he would probably not get a raise - again exactly what society wants, isn't it?"

I do hope the irony shines through...