The Tragedy of the Commons in Education
Why it's common for students to pass courses despite severely lacking knowledge of the content.
What is the tragedy of the commons?
It is widely known that in the absence of accountability and incentives that promote collective interests, people will focus on behaviors that benefit themselves as individuals, and pay less attention to how their actions affect the group as a whole.
As a result, when a group is given responsibility for the maintenance and improvement of a shared resource, the resource will typically deteriorate. While some individuals may care for the resource properly, they are typically unable or unwilling to pick up the slack of those who do not.
This kind of deterioration of a shared or “common” resource is known as the tragedy of the commons.
A concrete example unrelated to education
A concrete example of the tragedy of the commons is littering.
In the absence of accountability and incentives, public spaces will become filled with trash. Even people who dispose of their trash properly will generally not be motivated to pick up the trash of others.
To prevent a public space from becoming filled with trash, it is necessary to create accountability mechanisms, such as fines for littering, and incentives, such as paid jobs to incentivize some people to periodically clean the space.
But if the accountability and incentives are not implemented properly (e.g. the fine for littering is too low or unenforceable, or the paid jobs do not hire enough people or do not hold them accountable for actually cleaning the entire space), then the space will still become filled with trash.
Why it’s the same in education
The tragedy of the commons takes place in education in a similar way. Instead of “littering,” the tragic action is allowing students to pass courses despite severely lacking knowledge of the content. A teacher who “picks up other people’s trash” is a teacher who holds students accountable for learning the material in their course, including any prerequisite material that they are missing.
When there is a lot of “trash,” i.e. students are severely lacking prerequisite knowledge, a teacher who “picks up other people’s trash” puts forth a ton of effort supporting students through remedial assignments/assessments and help sessions, while simultaneously holding the line on expectations and enduring griping from students who experience a rude awakening about how much extra work they have to put in to shore up their missing foundations. Few teachers do this, just as few people pick up other people’s trash. Instead, when faced with a situation like this, the typical teacher will just run the class as usual, curve (or otherwise inflate) the grades, and leave the problem for the next year’s teacher to deal with (or not deal with).
While littering fines and paid janitorial jobs often provide the necessary accountability and incentives to keep spaces clean, teachers typically do not face penalties for allowing students to pass courses despite severely lacking knowledge of the content, and teachers are given no financial incentive for working hard to remedy these kinds of problematic situations that are created by other teachers. As a result, it is common for students to pass courses despite severely lacking knowledge of the content.