Washington — The chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Ben S. Bernanke, let it be known today that he’s concerned about the state of U.S. education and the potential negative effects it is having on the U.S. economy.
Mr. Bernanke, whose economic analyses command the attention of the world’s business community, told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce conference this afternoon here that spending on education “provides excellent returns.”
The Fed chairman was less sure, however, about the growing practice among American colleges of spending money on remedial education for students who arrive as freshmen unable to handle college work.
Mr. Bernanke, citing two studies of the question in the past two years, said that supplemental programs to help underprepared high-school graduates “could improve eventual college-completion rates.”
“Unfortunately,” he continued, “the research on the benefits of such programs is mixed, which reinforces the need to improve educational achievement in regular high-school classes.”
One study cited by Mr. Bernanke — conducted by Bridget Terry Long, an associate professor in the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Eric P. Bettinger, an assistant professor of economics at Case Western Reserve University — estimates that public colleges alone spend more than $1-billion a year on remedial education.
Mr. Bernanke, a former Princeton University professor, spoke at a conference on education and the work force sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Another major U.S. business group, the Conference Board, plans a similar conference next month on the subject of spending money on education that could improve the nation’s economic competitiveness. —Paul Basken
