A book I have been awaiting for years has finally been published — Bryan Caplan’s The Case Against Education.
How could a college professor (Caplan is on the esteemed economics faculty at George Mason) possibly be against education? He is very much in favor of people learning everything they might need or desire to learn, from job skills to obscure facts about opera, but argues that formal schooling is not a good way to go about it. What education provides (especially college) isn’t mostly skill and knowledge, but a signal that you have the traits that make you worth considering for employment. That is the main reason why college appears to be a good investment; it signals that the degree holder is more likely to turn out to be a productive worker than someone who doesn’t have a degree. We are spending a vast amount every year on educational credentials that merely put some people ahead of other people in the queue for jobs.
I review Caplan’s book for the Martin Center here.
Our education system, he argues entails a great waste of time and money. We’re caught up in this inefficient system because of Social Desirability Bias, which keeps almost everyone no matter where he is on the political spectrum from thinking clearly about the costs and benefits of education. We would be far better off if we stopped subsidizing education so we could put the resources to better use elsewhere, but Caplan sees no prospect for that happening. At best, we might start to change our emphasis from our current “College for Everyone!” toward vocational training and also let young people start working earlier in life.
Caplan has stirred up a Category 5 hurricane of controversy by taking on the American education system, but after reading the book I have no doubt that he is ready for all the arguments and opprobrium coming his way.