The Case Against Education

"The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money" by Bryan Caplan argues that a significant portion of education is not about acquiring useful job skills, but rather about signaling to employers. Caplan suggests that much of education's value comes from the signal it sends about a student's intelligence, conscientiousness, and conformity, rather than from the skills and knowledge they acquire. He believes that this signaling explains why employers value degrees even in fields unrelated to the job. Caplan also argues that this focus on signaling leads to a waste of resources and time, as students are made to learn subjects that are not directly useful to their future careers. He suggests that a more efficient educational system would focus more on vocational training and less on traditional academic education. He dispels many arguments that are taken for granted by looking at actual numbers.

My highlights:

p.48: Accounting for guessing, the public’s scientific illiteracy is astonishing. Barely half of American adults know the Earth goes around the sun.

p.49: After years of exposure, American adults know history, civics, science, and foreign languages exist. That’s about it.

p.53: education fails to durably improve critical thinking outside the classroom

p.55: studying statistics enhances statistical reasoning on real - life questions outside the classroom

p.57: Students who excel on exams frequently fail to apply their knowledge to the real world.

p.59: When someone insists their product has big , hard - to - see benefits , you should be dubious by default — especially when the easy - to - see benefits are small.

p.64: Schools build discipline by making students show up on time, sit still, keep their mouths shut, follow orders, and stay awake. Schools build social skills by making students cooperate, manage conflict, work as a team, dress nicely, and speak properly. The typical worker spends the day doing boring work in a hierarchical organization. Perhaps education acclimates children to their future role.

p.64: ...what if young adults spent their teens working? Work teaches discipline. Work teaches social skills. Why would education be any better at readying us for the world of work than the world of work itself?

p.67: The better your school, the better your connections after graduation.

p.67: ...lucrative networking begins after students graduate and find a niche in the sprawling modern economy.

p.69: As individuals’ schooling rises, so does their pay. The earnings gap is enormous.

p.72: ...unless you’re a Bill Gates superstar, you’ll rise faster and higher with the right diplomas to aid your ascent.

p.88: “Why on earth do workers signal ability with a four - year degree instead of a three - hour IQ test?” My response: employers reasonably fear high - IQ , low - education applicants’ low conscientiousness and conformity.

p.97: Graduation tells employers, “I take social norms seriously — and have the brains and work ethic to comply.”

p.116: Instead of “When countries invest more in schooling , they get richer,” the real story could be, “When countries get richer, they consume more schooling.”

p.124: When we near the pure signaling pole, education becomes an incinerator that burns society’s money, time, and brains in a futile attempt to make everyone look special.

p.157: Going to Harvard may not get you a better job but almost certainly puts you in an exclusive dating pool for life.

p.162: ...our educational decisions are deeply corrupted by inexperience, conformity, and pride.

p.171: ...school is one of people’s least - liked activities. They’re not fond of work either but resent school slightly more.

p.175: “An educated people is an innovative people” sounds plausible — until you recall the otherworldliness of the curriculum

p.187: ...signaling is a redistributive game, serving you a larger piece of the pie without enlarging it.

p.196: Proeducation industrial policy is so popular advocates have little need to share their reasons.

p.204: Continuing to waste money on quackery until a cure comes into your possession is folly.

p.204: The signaling model highlights two desirable forms of educational austerity. The first: cutting fat from the curriculum. The second : cutting subsidies for tuition.

p.206: Cutting fat leaves students with one well - lit path: work harder in their “real” classes.

p.212: Get rid of all the programs that don’t work wonders. Then — and only then — allocate some of the savings to the shiny outliers.

p.213: As education rises, workers — including the poor — need more education to get the same job . Where’s the social justice in that?

p.222: ...almost any political idea that becomes popular tends to remain popular. Even if it’s false. Even if it’s always been false. Why would the false become popular in the first place? Because human beings don’t like expressing — or believing — ugly truths. Instead, we gravitate — in word and thought — to views that “sound good.” Psychologists call this Social Desirability Bias.

p.222: “There’s no such thing as a stupid child” sounds better than “10% of children are stupid.

p.223: ...the bias works through intellectual laziness. It’s not a lie if you believe it — and if you avoid calm deliberation, you can believe almost anything.

p.226: ...all vocational education revolves around learning - by - doing, not learning - by - listening.

p.226: The standard case against vocational education, in contrast , starts with sweet slogans. College prep readies students for “whatever they choose to do with their lives.” The world is full of “late bloomers.” Every child can grow up to be president. Education that builds job skills is more socially valuable than education that merely impresses employers — even if both forms of education are equally profitable for the students themselves...

p.227: ...vocational students are typically “academic underachievers” before entering the vocational track. The right metric isn’t, “How do vocational students compare to average students?” but rather, “How do vocational students compare to comparable students who didn’t study a trade?”

p.229: Vocational ed stands out because it prepares students for common jobs. Classic college - prep classes like literature, foreign language, and history fall short because they prepare students for rare jobs.

p.229: Status is zero - sum; skill is not.

p.230: Children with joy in their hearts don’t belong in gray workshops, toiling all day long, cogs in the machine. They’re kids, not robots! Well, unless the gray workshop is called a “school” and the cogs earn zero wages. No one cares if kids devote every free minute to basketball or violin, but gainful employment is for grown - ups.

p.233: Once child labor is legal, some teens will take full - time jobs. As long as they have their parents ’ permission, let them.

p.234: STEM is vocational training for quants and scientists , not general training for workers.

p.234: The vocational route is painful for educators: to follow it, we must keep tabs on student aptitudes and the job market.

p.234: Ignorance of the future is no excuse for preparing students for occupations they almost surely won’t have. And if we know anything about the future of work, we know that demand for authors, historians, political scientists, translators, physicists, and mathematicians will stay low.

p.235: Placing everyone on the academic track seems more equal than sorting children by “aptitude” and assigning them to “suitable” training.

p.235: After graduation, plenty of high school and even college students taste how unqualified they are.

p.236: The modern fear is that work might interfere with school, never that school might interfere with work.

p.237: When the young quit school to work full time, we should not mourn. Such kids will never cure cancer, but at least they’ll be self - supporting members of society.

p.237: If we could raise a new productive, independent, engaged generation, wouldn’t that be a great improvement over the bored, infantilized youth of today?

p.239: Education definitely can be good for the soul. But that hardly shows actually existing education achieves this noble end.

p.240: Mediocre instruction is tolerable for practical training, but worthless for intellectual or artistic inspiration.

p.241: ...most teachers are boring. The students are worse: no matter how great their teachers, few yearn for the life of the mind.

p.242: Once everyone can enrich their souls for free, government subsidies for enrichment forfeit their rationale. To object, “But most people don’t use the Internet for spiritual enrichment” is actually a damaging admission that eager students are few and far between.

p.247: ...high culture requires extra mental effort to appreciate — and most humans resent mental effort.

p.285: ...the average college student shouldn’t go to college.

p.288: ...slash government subsidies. This won’t make classes relevant but will lead students to spend fewer years sitting in classrooms. Since they’re not learning much of use, the overarching effect will not be “deskilling” but credential deflation.

p.289: Policies don’t triumph and endure because they work well. They triumph and endure because they sound good. “Every child deserves the best education in the world” sounds great to citizens the world over, ruinous social returns notwithstanding.

music: Lo faresti