Bloggingheads debate available here. Yglesias writes that he doesn’t “buy” the idea that too many people are going to college (I disagree here and here), but he has this to say, and I couldn’t agree more:

Whether you think America has too many or too few college graduates, there are good reasons to wish for the development of more ways to demonstrate skill-possession that don’t depend merely on acquiring a credential. Such methods could help us do without college or else they might help us improve the quality of education. Either way, far too much of our higher education is a kind of black box where kids come in and come out and we don’t really know what happened.