| I have posted about this on https://windowsontheory.org/2018/05/02/short-non-review-of-c... I am of course biased as a faculty (though I think his policy prescriptions would negatively effect public schools more than private universities such as Harvard), but I think Caplan's analysis is extremely shallow. First, note that if he's right, higher education should be an incredible drag on the economy - we're taking 4 highly productive years out of the workforce. Such an extreme conclusion shouldn't be that hard to test without resorting to anecdotes and contorted reading of data. Educational policies and subsidies vary so greatly between different countries and even states, that if it was such a colossal waste we should be seeing it in the higher GDP or productivity of the less educated countries and localities.
(The article is in general very US-centric for an issue that is not specific to the US at all.) When a locality has less access to education, there would be naturally less of a "credential arms race" and so more people that have just as much base talent but did not go to college. Why aren't employers flocking to those places and hiring high school graduates who would be so much cheaper? I know one theory Caplan has is that completing college certifies "conformity" and "tolerance for boredom": is spending 4 years and tens or hundreds or thousands of dollars the only way to test for these properties? Also (at least from my experience in the IDF) conformity and tolerance for boredom are very important for the army, arguably moreso than many other employers, yet they do fine with high school graduates. |
Working any entry level office job from age 18-22 would be a pretty good test. I would not have survived it.