The Case Against Education is now in paperback, with a new Afterword by yours truly. Highlights from the Afterword:
My earlier work (Caplan 2007) maintains that when economists and the public disagree, the economists are usually right. The Case Against Education, however, focuses on a rare topic where economists and the public are on the same page. The sad result, in my view, is that economists end up rationalizing popular errors rather than correcting them. Not all economists, of course; Michael Spence won a Nobel Prize for developing the signaling model on which my book relies. Yet by and large, labor and education economists thoughtlessly equate schooling with “human capital formation.”
Though this allegation may seem harsh, I stand by it. Almost all of the evidence on jobs and incomes that economists present on behalf of the human capital model is equally consistent with the signaling model. To adjudicate the debate, we need to go beyond economics to psychology, sociology, and education research – the fields that directly measure students’ learning and workers’ skills. Yet few economists who specialize in education bother to skim this extra-economic research, much less read it carefully.
What about that Arteaga study?
An excellent article, but given the massive quantity of prior research, I am baffled by the idea that any one paper could appreciably tip the scales. If the numbers from Universidad de Los Andes came out the other way, can we really imagine many economists abandoning the human capital model, or even significantly moderating their support? In any case, the Colombian curriculum reform axed some of economics and business students’ most vocational coursework!
[T]he reform: (i) took six mandatory courses and change them to optional courses (Monetary Policy, Public Finance, Trade, Marxist Economics, Colombian Economic Policy, and Social Programs Evaluation); (ii) reduced the number of optional courses by four; (iii) combined two probability and statistics courses into one; and (iv) combined accounting and economic measurement courses into one. The business department eliminated Computer Programming, Simulations, and Microeconomics I. In addition, the requirement of six upper-division electives was reduced to three. For both majors, instruction time was reduced from 4.5 years to 4 years. (Arteaga 2018, p.214)After interviewing employers, Arteaga reports:
(i) most knew about the reform from talking to recent graduates; (ii) they believe they can detect changes in human capital through tests they administered in the recruitment process; (iii) they argue that for some jobs, the content made optional in the new curriculum is critical; (iv) they believe that taking fewer elective courses affects graduates’ labor prospects beyond the recruitment process, because the professors in those courses are helpful with job offers and job referrals; and (v) wages for new graduates are fixed.Obviously Arteaga had to work with the natural experiment that really occurred, but she is looking for signaling outside its native habitat. Looking forward, researchers should instead keep their eyes peeled for curriculum reforms that add or subtract clear-cut “fluff.” The foreign language requirements so many Ph.D.s in the sciences used to endure are one fine example.
Big picture:
After ceding sprawling intellectual territory to signaling, however, most respondents balked at my top policy recommendation: educational austerity. If we’re wasting hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on a vast academic arms race, why not cut the subsidies? The balkers coalesce into four main groups: humanists, reformers, egalitarians, and fatalists.
How do all four groups go wrong? Buy the book to find out!
READER COMMENTS
Denver
Jul 19 2019 at 9:50am
Regarding that Arteaga study, aren’t the findings perfectly consistent with signalling? If you’re an employer and you have to decide between two potential employees to hire. One went to a college where he completed the full coursework, and one went to a college that allowed him to skip several of his courses. Which one are you going to hire?
Muhammad Rashid
Jul 19 2019 at 11:11am
Your book and the title are of-course controversial as usual.
The Arteaga study is of-course quite interesting to me.Being an independent scholar I am an undergraduate double major in Philosophy and Economics and a Dual Masters in Economics and Business and I am very motivated to go for doctoral studies Recently my school reduced the number of core courses required for the business program. Although unaffected as I am a dual masters the case may not be the same for new and especially younger students in accelerated programs.
The following points from the Arteaga study are caught my attention.
. Reduction in wages- reduced premium by 14.5% and 11.8%, following a 20% and 14% reduction in economics and business respectively.
.employers quickly find out about the reduction in human capital. Furthermore, the reduction in credits implies a reduction in cost of the program which is a one-time cost while the earnings are spread over a lifetime.
.changes in curriculum changes in probability of getting hired falls from 27%-6%!
.reduction in probability of being successful by 17%.
Vincent Passanisi
Jul 19 2019 at 3:33pm
One of the best, most insightful books I read last year. Even bought extra copies for many of my friends who are educators. Highly recommended. Wish it had come out sooner–I would have taken a completely different approach to the college education of my own children. Also, made me curious in how signaling plays a role in other aspects of our lives, and so picked up Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson’s book.
I will say this: the fact that most educators are loath to consider the ideas put forth in this book, even as a partial explanation for why our educational system under-performs, is very telling.
Nick R
Jul 19 2019 at 8:42pm
Bryan, a brilliant book, but you now owe your fans and the public a sequel: “The case for education–done right”. After all, we know from a number of your blog entries that even if you don’t rub your kids’ noses in “education” provided by the Education Establishment, you do things to give them opportunities to educate themselves (unless they travel the world entirely on their own dime, and it’s just coincidence that you’re there at the same time). Was it just an amazing coincidence that they decided to take a class in Spanish on Hayek rather than say, James Kenneth Galbraith?
Tiago
Jul 20 2019 at 8:53am
Congrats. I wonder if Amazon will make the afterword available for those of us with the Kindle version.
KevinDC
Jul 20 2019 at 9:52am
I agree with Denver. The fact that “most [employers] knew about the reform from talking to recent graduates” immediately puts this study back into signaling territory. It also fits with one of the points Bryan makes in his book. He points out that students try really hard to get into the best colleges they can, but once they’re in, they try to fill their curriculum with easy-A courses with the most lenient professors they can. (In general, obviously) This make sense on the signalling model because schools have widely known reputations that can be seen on a resume but individual courses and professors generally don’t. But in this particular study, the signals went a level deeper than they usually do, and the way employers reacted is at least as consistent with the signalling model as the human capital model.
A more convincing approach would have been for the employers to know nothing about the changes to the coursework and then checking back a few years later – block the signal completely. If after a few years in the workforce, the students who took the heavier curriculum had shown themselves to be more productive, gotten promoted more quickly, had higher ratings from employers, etc, all in the absence of a signal and based entirely on how well they did the job, that would be solid evidence. But “A change to the coursework was signaled to the employers, and employers preferred graduates who signaled a heavier course-load, therefore human capital” just doesn’t work.
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