Emergy Evaluation of Formal Education in the United States: 1870 to 2011

Abstract

We evaluated the education system of the United States from 1870 to 2011 using emergy methods. The system was partitioned into three subsystems (elementary, secondary and college/university education) and the emergy inputs required to support each subsystem were determined for every year over the period of analysis. We calculated the emergy required to produce an individual with a given number of years of education by summing over the years of support needed to attain that level of education. In 1983, the emergy per individual ranged from 8.63E+16 semj/ind. for a preschool student to 165.9E+16 semj/ind. for a Ph.D. with 2 years of postdoctoral experience. The emergy of teaching and learning per hour spent in this process was calculated as the sum of the emergy delivered by the education and experience of the teachers and the emergy brought to the process of learning by the students. The emergy of teaching and learning was about an order of magnitude larger than the annual emergy supporting the U.S. education system (i.e., the emergy inflows provided by the environment, energy and materials, teachers,

How valuable could traditional ecological knowledge education be for a resource-limited future?: An emergy evaluation in two Mexican villages

“…TEK is often ignored in such analyses. In analyses for which labor based upon TEK is considered, it is estimated qualitatively and does not have basis in quantitative data-based calculations (Alfaro-Arguello et al, 2010, Campbell andLu, 2014;Diemont et al, 2006). The transformity of labor is generally a function of the caloric energy expended by workers, the per capita emergy supporting individuals in a given area, and the educational level attained by workers (Bergquist et al, 2011).…”

Overview and Insights from ‘Systems Education for a Sustainable Planet’

“…Derived by Odum [37] emergy is an equivalence measure (quantified in one kind of available energy, e.g., solar joules) that estimates the units of energy used-up in the process of making a product or service. Campbell and Lu use emergy data to calculate the stock of knowledge in the USA based on the assumptions that (1) the emergy required for much of the information stored in human knowledge can be evaluated through an analysis of the formal education system of a nation; (2) the work performed by individuals in carrying out economic and social activities is primarily a function of their levels of education and experience; and (3) human knowledge does not diminish with use and therefore stays with an individual over their lifetime [13]. The hypothesis is that accumulated knowledge ultimately determines the kinds of economic and social activities that can be carried out within a country [13].…”

“…Campbell and Lu [13] The concept of 'embodied energy', i.e., 'emergy', is used by Campbell and Lu to measure the inputs into education subsystems (elementary, secondary, and college/university) between 1870 and 2011 in the USA. Derived by Odum [37] emergy is an equivalence measure (quantified in one kind of available energy, e.g., solar joules) that estimates the units of energy used-up in the process of making a product or service.…”

“…For example, the central importance of the word 'systems' can be clearly seen, together with the other high frequency words such as education, learning, system, dynamics, thinking, design, systemic, management, sustainability, etc. The material provided by the authors for the special issue [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] discusses the current status of systems education and the extent to which the systems community is delivering on the ambition to provide a systems education for a sustainable planet. For the purposes of this paper, the 14 special issue papers have been classified into five distinct themes, as illustrated in Figure 2.…”

“…Different learning approaches are used, but the message is the same-we need to educate people to work with complexity and uncertainty if we are to progress the goal of a sustainable planet [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15].…”