[soberhoff]

Are you familiar with Caplan's Case against Education? Here's a good review (and some critique): https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3678

Caplan makes a very compelling case that education, while inarguably teaching something, primarily serves to signal preexisting ability.

[Hermitian909]

Not who you responded to, but as someone who spent many years in education I find Caplan's case deeply unconvincing. Yes, education has a component of signaling, but he assigns far too much value to it.

I find the core of his argument rests on the assertion that we all went through school and don't think we learned much of value/it didn't help us. What he's actually describing here is a form of the curse of expertise. Humans are incredibly bad at remembering what it was like to not know things, it's why people make such atrocious teachers without training. But educators are actually helping to build valuable skills and complex mental models that would not arise naturally.

If you interact with homeschooled children of deeply incompetent parents or certain alternative schooling systems (Scientology schools mess their kids up) you can see what the alternative provides, and it's not pretty.

[soberhoff]

As somebody who spent many years in education (as a student and about 1 year as a teacher) I find Caplan's case deeply convincing.

Caplan actually goes through reams of evidence. As an extreme example, in 2008-9 there were 34000 new history graduates in the US. But there are only 3500 historians working in the whole country.

Now, are you trying to argue that history can actually measurably improve productivity in other fields, such as accounting, and it's just the curse of knowledge that prevents us from seeing this?

Also, incompetent homeschooling parents and Scientology schools are hardly the only alternatives to public schooling. One option that Caplan advocates strongly is vocational training. Instead of giving them history classes, let teenagers who chose to do so become apprentice carpenters, there are 900000 of those.

[Hermitian909]

You're straw-manning here, Caplan makes a broad argument against public education at the primary, secondary, and post-secondary levels, I said I disagree with his large scale conclusion and you're asking me to defend the number of history degrees in the US.

The US public school system is in need of wide reforms at all levels, I'm not going to defend it piecemeal because there are many pieces that are not defensible. None of that makes Caplan right though.

[soberhoff]

What are we even arguing over? Is it just over the exact percentage of signaling in education's payoff?

[Hermitian909]

I thought we were arguing over two things:

How much value is created through publicly funded education beyond basic literacy and numeracy, which Caplan cedes.

Whether Caplan's proposed changes to the education system are good ones.

[soberhoff]

Regarding the first point, Caplan personally estimates that about 80% of education is signalling and that 30% is the lowest figure one can plausibly maintain.

As for the second point, I wouldn't bet my life on it. But I think the case is strong enough that experimental measures in that direction are warranted.

[Faark]

Do you have a more on point summary? That's a lot of text and the parts I skimmed say little against education. Obviously education is used for signaling ability. Not using it this way would be stupid, since it's one of the best tools for that we have. Kind of like the SSN seems to be used as ID in the US. Doesn't mean both of them don't also serve their original purpose anymore. And I haven't found much of of that in that 11 page blog post.

Then there is a bunch about how to build better schools. This seems reasonable in principle, since the way we teach especially in early years is still heavily influenced from by long ago times with different workforce needs and a different culture in general. But lets better not get into the actually mentioned proposals. And this still does hardly fit the "IQ unrelated from schools" narrative discussed in the comments here.

So back to those: If school has no impact, then were do those traits we aspire come from? Are here actually people who believe you can just dump an infant with perfect genes in front of a TV, feed (&co) it regularly, and then expect it to become a genius in adulthood? If not, then what makes the difference and why shouldn't some "school" help citizens apply whatever it is, supported by policy?

[soberhoff]

In brief: there are strong reasons to believe that much of higher education and even large parts of school serve not to teach but to test students. An English major doesn't lead to higher pay because it makes one a substantially better worker. It does so because achieving it signals three primary traits to the potential employer: intelligence, conscientiousness, and conformity.

This isn't education's only function. Some learning undeniably still takes place. But in Caplan's estimation signalling is probably about 80% of the payoff.

This picture is supported by a large number of observations:

- Why do even top schools like Harvard make little to no effort to prevent non-students from attending lectures?

- Why do students cheer when class is canceled?

- Why does ratemyprofessor.com have the measures "overall quality" and "difficulty" but not an explicit "informativeness" measure and why is high difficulty considered bad?

- Why do students cheat on tests and why do teachers make such a large effort to prevent it?

- Why do employers rarely show concern that you might've forgotten what you learned?

- Why do statistics indicate that graduation year has a much greater effect on wages than all the other years?

All these points contradict the "education = learning" viewpoint but are straightforwardly explained with the signalling model.

And once you acknowledge the importance of signalling it puts statements such as

> And, a good education pays off even for less gifted people. Their lives are better, they contribute more to the economy and less to crime.

into a completely new perspective. As Caplan writes:

> The classic example: You want a better view at a concert. What can you do? Stand up. Individually, standing works. What happens, though, if everyone copies you? Can everyone see better by standing? No way. Popular support for education subsidies rests on the same fallacy. The person who gets more education, gets a better job. It works; you see it plainly. Yet it does not follow that if everyone gets more education, everyone gets a better job. In the signaling model, subsidizing everyone’s schooling to improve our jobs is like urging everyone to stand up at a concert to improve our views. Both are “smart for one, dumb for all.”

[Faark]

> In the signaling model, subsidizing everyone’s schooling to improve our jobs is like urging everyone to stand up at a concert to improve our views.

It seems that model doesn't even attempt to pretend anymore that our society gives equal opportunity to everyone? Now only the rich shall have the opportunity to signal? That's why I didn't want to go into the actual proposals in that critique... at best they seem to ignore all the complexity of the actual world we live in. Kinda reminded me of someone who just discovered Libertarianism and now thinks governments are totally unnecessary.

If his argument would be "we should reduce signaling", I'd totally love for that to be possible. But I'm not sure it actually is, when taking all the game-theoretic aspects of the real world into account. Maybe all he wants is to reset the out of control spiral of signaling for now? But if the only way we can do so is also a 0.1%er-capitalists wet dream, then I've little hope for the future. Signaling will always exist and be necessary as long as there is a competitive job market, and I don't see society working without.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to respond. I like the first observation, since it highlights how narrow the allowed path for effective signaling is. Just finishing the material isn't enough, you have to be accepted into the school through official ways. Some observations are kind of weak, though. Especially the second, since it boils down to many people preferring short term gratification over long term success. Students will cheer even if tests are standardized and those canceled classes thus will lead to worse grades => failure at signaling.

[hash872]

....all education? Basic literacy & numeracy? Teaching children how to count and their ABCs? How do you think civilization would function, then? I think that Caplan is arguing against college and further on

[soberhoff]

This is addressed in the summary. No, these essential skills are given a pass.