[cromwellian]

"You study arcane subjects year after year, knowing you’ll never use most of what you learned after graduation"

Well, that wasn't true for me, and I'm pretty sure for those in engineering or science, it isn't, but even the history, philosophy, and economics courses I took I recall and use. Even Steve Jobs, who merely audited a class on calligraphy, took a great value from it.

The fundamental flaw of Capland argument, who seems to be pushing this theme for years, is to view education purely in terms of economic benefit. It could simultaneously be true that the vast majority of your salary comes from signalling, but it could also be true that you gained great value from your education. Not everyone who gets an advanced education tries to maximize salary.

Capland's analysis, for example, would completely ignore the value of someone who chose to become a teacher or open source contributor.

Also, by induction, you could apply his argument to high school. Do we have evidence during the industrial revolution where blue collar factory work started to require more than an 8th grade education, that it made any difference besides signalling on salary?

Or, if you look at developing economies, where people often experience significant increases in wages as they move up the industrial ladder, sometimes without even full literacy, but merely from on the job experience. Should we assume education isn't worthwhile if you can't show a correlation between education and wages other than signalling?

One of the frustrating things about these kinds of economic analyses is that they narrowing look at only a sliver of what it is to be a human being, or the potential positive market externalities by having educated population. If we just measure the overall social improvements from the education of women, not in terms of individual wage performance, but in terms of overall health of society itself, it can't be reduced to a micro-analysis.

As a side note, I've seen Bryan's work forwarded within libertarian and right wing forums, in large part, to justify arguments to defund and dismantle support for college, both from a cultural aspect (Colleges seen as liberal/left institutions) but also from a notion that they don't want the government funding it. The fact that he's funded by the Cato Institute raises my suspicion that there's a political angle involved.

Even if you could argue college is not producing economic gains, but merely a signal, one has to look at a future where structural unemployment from automation may make a lot of work unneccessary, period. Do we eliminate education when work is no longer a necessity? Or could it be, that it might be better if people have a lifelong opportunity for intellectual enlightenment, it might be cheaper than funding prisons to house them, or falling back to religious institutions to give humans something to do that has meaning besides straight up consumption.

[npunt]

Background on GMU's economics dept funding, where this guy is faculty: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/us/koch-donors-george-mas...

[barry-cotter]

> "You study arcane subjects year after year, knowing you’ll never use most of what you learned after graduation" Well, that wasn't true for me, and I'm pretty sure for those in engineering or science, it isn't, but even the history, philosophy, and economics courses I took I recall and use. Even Steve Jobs, who merely audited a class on calligraphy, took a great value from it.

The average graduate of a major in a foreign language can’t speak it at a professional level. Given that I think we can at least say the average person’s high school foreign language study is totally wasted. The average US citizen doesn’t know each state has two Senators. People who retain knowledge that they were not originally interested in and use regularly are abnormal, nerds. Most people retain astonishingly little. I know someone with a Geography degree who couldn’t identify the major rivers and mountain ranges of Europe on an unlabelled map.

> The fundamental flaw of Capland argument, who seems to be pushing this theme for years, is to view education purely in terms of economic benefit. It could simultaneously be true that the vast majority of your salary comes from signalling, but it could also be true that you gained great value from your education. Not everyone who gets an advanced education tries to maximize salary.

That’s not his argument. His argument isn’t just that education is in large part wasteful signalling. It’s also unpleasant. Most people care as little for literature as I do for American football. Forcing them to learn about it leads to no lasting knowledge or appreciation and makes their lives actively worse.

> Also, by induction, you could apply his argument to high school. Do we have evidence during the industrial revolution where blue collar factory work started to require more than an 8th grade education, that it made any difference besides signalling on salary?

Average education levels in England went down during the Industrial Revolution, not up, as manual labour became less skilled.

>Or, if you look at developing economies, where people often experience significant increases in wages as they move up the industrial ladder, sometimes without even full literacy, but merely from on the job experience.

Yes, we can see that education is over supplied on a strictly economic basis if we look at China, which grew richer much, much faster than it grew educated once Deng opened it up, or if we compare changes in education levels with changes in economic growth rates. No relationship.

> Should we assume education isn't worthwhile if you can't show a correlation between education and wages other than signalling?

No, education is pleasant for some, just as spending time with friends is, or smoking. But we shouldn’t subsidise smoking and make non-smokers pay.

> One of the frustrating things about these kinds of economic analyses is that they narrowing look at only a sliver of what it is to be a human being, or the potential positive market externalities by having educated population.

If there are externalities the government should subsidise education. It does, to an extent far above any plausible positive externalities. The credentialism this makes possible is a massive negative externality.

> If we just measure the overall social improvements from the education of women, not in terms of individual wage performance, but in terms of overall health of society itself, it can't be reduced to a micro-analysis.

Oh yes it can. If you can point to what health of a society means we can make a first pass at measuring it.

> Even if you could argue college is not producing economic gains, but merely a signal, one has to look at a future where structural unemployment from automation may make a lot of work unneccessary, period. Do we eliminate education when work is no longer a necessity?

No, for the same reason we won’t eliminate drinking coffee or walking in the park. We’re rich. We like it, we can afford it. Let’s do it.

> Or could it be, that it might be better if people have a lifelong opportunity for intellectual enlightenment, it might be cheaper than funding prisons to house them, or falling back to religious institutions to give humans something to do that has meaning besides straight up consumption.

Intellectual pleasure is consumption, a pleasure for a relatively small minority of people. School is the closest to prison most people get, the most locked down, unfree environment they will ever encounter, sitting for hours doing as they are told, when they are told, asking permission to use the bathroom.

[cromwellian]

>It’s also unpleasant. Most people care as little for literature as I do for American football. Forcing them to learn about it leads to no lasting knowledge or appreciation and makes their lives actively worse.

>School is the closest to prison most people get, the most locked down, unfree environment they will ever encounter, sitting for hours doing as they are told, when they are told, asking permission to use the bathroom.

Summary: Kids hate school. I don't wanna eat my veggies. Your conclusion: compulsory education is bad. My conclusion: make education fun and delightful. Look at the Finnish model for example.

Even if most of humanity could survive economically, not being literate, the world is far better off with universal education and literacy in innumerable ways.

It's shocking to see someone even arguing that kids shouldn't be compelled to be educated. Perhaps you could argue that adults shouldn't, but education overall in sociological studies has been shown to be an inoculation against violence.

Hatred of having to learn things you don't want to learn is not a condemnation of education. People often don't even know whether or not they will like something until they are exposed to it, and anyone with children knows this, how "I don't wanna do this" can suddenly turn into "hey, can you drive me to class, I don't want to miss this"

I absolutely hated history class in high school. I hated economics and philosophy in college. Until after I had taken them, I then became intensely interested in the subjects and voraciously read everything I could find.

We are headed into a world where people won't be able to delegate critical thinking skills to institutions, because institutions will have trust in them destroyed by fakery everywhere. Teaching people to think critically and be skeptical, to reserve judgement, demand peer reviewed facts, to hedge against rash action will be critical to stability in society in the future IMHO.

> Oh yes it can. If you can point to what health of a society means we can make a first pass at measuring it.

Many studies have correlated the education of women with numerous variables that represent non-economic quality of life: reduction in infant mortality, increases in life expectancy, reductions of violence. The UN and OECD have many variables beyond economics that measure well being. There are even surveys of overall satisfaction and happiness.

I also question conclusions that people "don't use" stuff they learn in college. That treats learning as a vocational enterprise. You don't just apply specific things you've be taught by rote memorization and practice, but you develop connections between subjects you've only briefly been exposed to, that can affect your decisions later in life, sometimes serendipitously and unconsciously. The same people who say they never use algebra or calculus, end up solving problems in Excel using the same skills they learned solving word problems in school.

I took 4 years of French in high school. I forgot most of it. However, when I travel, most of the latin roots I learned have helped me decipher signs in countries where I couldn't even speak the language beyond Helloy. And the experience of what I did wrong in French, later helped me learn Mandarin by avoiding the behaviors that turned me off in French.

I hated taking "required" classes in college. Now I am glad I did, because I was so narrow minded and pigheaded at that age. I also used to hate travel, really hate it. I was introverted, bored of long rides, uncomfortable in foreign lands where I didn't understand anything. But after being dragged all over the world, traveling and living abroad, my perspective on many things changed.

Too many people want to live circumscribed in a bubble. Education in all its forms, be it primary school, college, voracious reading, or travel, moving people outside their comfort zone has many benefits.

Eat your veggies, they're good for you.