Writing in Time, NR’s Ramesh Ponnuru has an article making “The Case Against College Education.”

I’m glad to see such educational skepticism getting into “mainstream” publications.

I’ll comment on a couple of points. Ponnuru writes, “People with college degrees make a lot more than people without them, and that difference is rising.” The average earnings argument is extremely bad on several counts, among them that it cannot account for the effects of credential inflation. As the bachelor’s degree has become increasingly common and routinely used as a screening device by employers, good career paths for people without degrees have been blocked off. It’s not that employers pay more just because someone has a B.A. to his name, but that they offer fewer and fewer job opportunities to people who don’t have that credential.

Second, he addresses the argument that college should be about more than job training: “To talk about college this way may sound elitist. It may even sound philistine, since the purpose of a liberal-arts education is to produce well-rounded citizens rather than productive workers.” Ponnuru then makes the sound point that it’s a mistake to think that people can’t be well-rounded unless they go to college until age 22. What I’d add is that at many schools, the old “well-rounded” part of the curriculum is terribly eroded. Colleges that still have a solid core curriculum are few and far between.