Yesterday Joanne Jacobs posted a quote from Adam Smith on education and teacher retention. Just to add to what Joanne said: Smith experienced what he considered to be the worst of incentives when he attended Oxford University, where the faculty droned on and on and on, and didn’t seem to care whether the students were getting anything out of their lectures. Smith advocated a teacher remuneration system whereby the students paid teachers directly; in fact, this system was in place when he was chair of logic and then of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow. Talk about the incentives to exchange value for value.