The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Editorial Staff
• Associate Editors
• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Isaac Kramnick, English Middle-class Radicalism In the Eighteenth Century
• I: I Social and Political Thought
• Community, Individuality, and Freedom
• Rousseau's Social Thought
• A Sociological History of Utilitarianism
• Spencer and Comte In American Labor Thought
• Bureaucracy In Weber & Kafka
• Bergson's Political Doctrines
• Oakeshott's Political Theory
• Oakeshott's Political Philosophy
• Undermocratic Liberal Republicans
• Wilkes and Radical Politics
• Late Liberal Imperialism
• Kant and Reason In Politics
• II: Education, Politics, and Values
• Schools and Political Socialization
• Schooling For Imperialism
• The Political Economy of Public Schooling
• Federal Education Policy
• The Problems of Federal Education
• William James As Individualist
• Existential and Phenomenological Education
• Early Federal Educational Policy
• Education, Labor Markets, & Controlled Youth
• Government Control of Universities
• III: Economic Thought and Values
• Business and Legal History
• Schumpeter's Economic Theories
• Menger and Entrepreneurship
• Saint-simonian Economic Ideas
• The Free Market & the Third World
• Democratic Capitalism, Justice, & Religion
• Property, Law, and Economics
• The Economic Analysis of Law Vs. Values
• IV: Foreign Policy and Ideology
• The Attractiveness of War
• Walzer On International Morality
• Eduard Bernstein and Imperialism
• Roosevelt Vs. His War Critics
• American Preconceptions of Japan
• The Marshall Plan and Russia
• V: Self-knowledge, Autonomy, and Liberty
• The Self In Political Thought
• Autonomy, Self, and Will Power
• Self-knowledge: Goethe, Kant, and Hegel
• The Egoist As a “psychopath”
• The History of Social Psychology
• Psychology, Self, and Society
• Free Will, Responsibility, and Motivation
• Free Will, Purpose, and Responsibility
• Political “groupthink” and Reality
• Personal Freedom and Autonomy
• Research Fields
• Economics
• Education
• History
• Philosophy
• Political Philosophy
• Psychology
• Sociology

The Problems of Federal Education

Hendrik D. Gideonse

• University of Cincinnati

The administration of federal educational programs is a challenging problem. The program objectives tend to focus on objectives about which little is known. Frequent conflicts erupt between the personnel of the federal agencies and the multitudinous groups with which they work. The federal agencies themselves are plagued by significant internal problems, specifically with their staff-line relations. The federal programs are characterized by a pervasive distrust of the people and agencies, with which they deal. Finally the federal agencies tend to be insufficiently aware of how their acts affect people.

The author is generally aware in his discussion of the problems of the incentive structure under which these problems have developed, but suggests only isolated remedies.