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A review by nghia
The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money by Bryan Caplan
3.0
Bryan Caplan makes a strong case that much education, especially at the university level but even at the high school level in some circumstances, is a complete waste of time and money. Instead of actually teaching useful skills, he argues, it is simply zero-sum signalling.
The first four chapters are the strongest and while, I was reading them, I considered whether this was a 4- or even 5-star book. Caplan marshalls a number of arguments to try to convince you that education, at least as currently practiced today, is largely signalling rather than building actual human capital.
He offers up a number of arguments, no single one of which is decisive or completely convincing, but the sheer number of them adds enough weight to be convincing. We teach a lot of apparently useless subjects that have no value in the marketplace and little real world use: arts, foreign languages, geometry, P.E.!. University majors are replete with "useless" degrees that don't translate into jobs: philosophy, history, theology. Tests of long-term retention show that most people forget half of what they learn in school in 5 years and all of it within 25 years. Basic skills like reading comprehension, history, science, foreign languages, and numeracy are surprisingly low, even among college graduates who have studied them for 15+ years.
Claims about "learning how to learn" and "becoming a well-rounded individual" and "critical thinking" also fail to show up in a century of research. University students regularly skip classes they are paying for, forget everything immediately after cramming for an exam, and cheer when the teacher cancels class. (Shouldn't they instead be bemoaning the fact that they are missing out on a chance to build their precious human capital, Caplan argues?)
But starting in chapter 5, things begin to break down. Caplan essentially builds two giant formulas that try to calculate the selfish value of education (i.e. to you) and the social value of education (i.e. to society as a whole). These two chapters are pretty terrible, though I sympathise with the bind Caplan is in. There are too nitty gritty to be interesting. He flies through hundreds of studies that try to quantify dozens of factors. But they are too high level to meaningfully engage with anything. There's a lot of "trust me, I read a lot of studies on this and 2.8 is the most reasonable number to use here", which is just always going to be unsatisfying.
But my biggest complaint with all of this is simply that Caplan's argument would be a lot less compelling if he bothered to offer confidence intervals or sensitivity analysis instead of just point estimates. While I'm sympathetic to his claim that we have to come up with some estimate (everyone is implicitly doing that anyway when they decide whether or not to go to university), I think the confidence intervals given the data we have are so huge that we can't be nearly as certain as he is.
Once past all this honestly somewhat tedious analysis we to his proposed solutions which are fairly disappointing. He barely attempts to offer any realistic solutions. Immediately cut all school funding by 20%. (He adds that he actually is hard-core libertarian and doesn't think the state should provide any public schooling at all.) That's...just not actually a practical suggestion.
Some of his other ideas are a bit more tractable: get rid of Federal subsidies (via student loan guarantees); allow poor students to drop out of high school and enter the work force instead; dial back child labor laws to make work a viable option to decades of useless schooling; drop useless coursework like foreign languages, art, music, social studies, and history; give students more numerous and diverse options (why don't classes teach Japanese manga instead of 200 year old British poems?); allow more time for play.
A few reviews take umbrage, in particular, with his arguments in favor of expanded child labor. But I think he's actually fairly reasonable here. He's not actually arguing for child labor so much as teenage labor and offering young adults an option other than the academic track.
Caplan ends the book with a bizarre set of dialogues that rehashes his main points. He did something similar in [b:Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think|10266902|Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think|Bryan Caplan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328841683l/10266902._SY75_.jpg|15167333]. He really needs an editor to tell him to stop it.
So, a strong beginning that fizzles a bit down the stretch. I was already predisposed to agree with Caplan. My sister-in-law has a university degree in Spanish and works as an insurance claim adjuster. Absolutely nothing she learned in university is relevant for her job. Everything was "on-the-job training". But she ended up with a mountain of debt that took years to pay off. I think everyone has stories like this. Bartenders with a bachelor. Waiters with a masters. Chefs with a PhD. It all seems like a terrible waste. But Caplan points out that we're all trapped inside the system. It might be bad for society but good for an individual.
The road to academic success is paved with the trinity of intelligence, conscientiousness, and conformity.
The first four chapters are the strongest and while, I was reading them, I considered whether this was a 4- or even 5-star book. Caplan marshalls a number of arguments to try to convince you that education, at least as currently practiced today, is largely signalling rather than building actual human capital.
He offers up a number of arguments, no single one of which is decisive or completely convincing, but the sheer number of them adds enough weight to be convincing. We teach a lot of apparently useless subjects that have no value in the marketplace and little real world use: arts, foreign languages, geometry, P.E.!. University majors are replete with "useless" degrees that don't translate into jobs: philosophy, history, theology. Tests of long-term retention show that most people forget half of what they learn in school in 5 years and all of it within 25 years. Basic skills like reading comprehension, history, science, foreign languages, and numeracy are surprisingly low, even among college graduates who have studied them for 15+ years.
After years of exposure, American adults know history, civics, science, and foreign languages exist. That’s about it.
Claims about "learning how to learn" and "becoming a well-rounded individual" and "critical thinking" also fail to show up in a century of research. University students regularly skip classes they are paying for, forget everything immediately after cramming for an exam, and cheer when the teacher cancels class. (Shouldn't they instead be bemoaning the fact that they are missing out on a chance to build their precious human capital, Caplan argues?)
Most of what schools teach has no value in the labor market. Students fail to learn most of what they’re taught. Adults forget most of what they learn.
But starting in chapter 5, things begin to break down. Caplan essentially builds two giant formulas that try to calculate the selfish value of education (i.e. to you) and the social value of education (i.e. to society as a whole). These two chapters are pretty terrible, though I sympathise with the bind Caplan is in. There are too nitty gritty to be interesting. He flies through hundreds of studies that try to quantify dozens of factors. But they are too high level to meaningfully engage with anything. There's a lot of "trust me, I read a lot of studies on this and 2.8 is the most reasonable number to use here", which is just always going to be unsatisfying.
But my biggest complaint with all of this is simply that Caplan's argument would be a lot less compelling if he bothered to offer confidence intervals or sensitivity analysis instead of just point estimates. While I'm sympathetic to his claim that we have to come up with some estimate (everyone is implicitly doing that anyway when they decide whether or not to go to university), I think the confidence intervals given the data we have are so huge that we can't be nearly as certain as he is.
Once past all this honestly somewhat tedious analysis we to his proposed solutions which are fairly disappointing. He barely attempts to offer any realistic solutions. Immediately cut all school funding by 20%. (He adds that he actually is hard-core libertarian and doesn't think the state should provide any public schooling at all.) That's...just not actually a practical suggestion.
Some of his other ideas are a bit more tractable: get rid of Federal subsidies (via student loan guarantees); allow poor students to drop out of high school and enter the work force instead; dial back child labor laws to make work a viable option to decades of useless schooling; drop useless coursework like foreign languages, art, music, social studies, and history; give students more numerous and diverse options (why don't classes teach Japanese manga instead of 200 year old British poems?); allow more time for play.
There really is no need for K–12 to teach history, social studies, art, music, or foreign languages. This is especially clear if you recall how much students forget: despite years of schoolwork, American adults can’t date the Civil War, name their congressman, draw, sing, or speak French.
A few reviews take umbrage, in particular, with his arguments in favor of expanded child labor. But I think he's actually fairly reasonable here. He's not actually arguing for child labor so much as teenage labor and offering young adults an option other than the academic track.
The vast American underclass shows this disturbing possibility is more than theoretically possible. Keeping bored, resentful kids on the academic track backfires. Instead of “downshifting” to vocational training, they settle for unskilled labor—or worse.
Caplan ends the book with a bizarre set of dialogues that rehashes his main points. He did something similar in [b:Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think|10266902|Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think|Bryan Caplan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328841683l/10266902._SY75_.jpg|15167333]. He really needs an editor to tell him to stop it.
So, a strong beginning that fizzles a bit down the stretch. I was already predisposed to agree with Caplan. My sister-in-law has a university degree in Spanish and works as an insurance claim adjuster. Absolutely nothing she learned in university is relevant for her job. Everything was "on-the-job training". But she ended up with a mountain of debt that took years to pay off. I think everyone has stories like this. Bartenders with a bachelor. Waiters with a masters. Chefs with a PhD. It all seems like a terrible waste. But Caplan points out that we're all trapped inside the system. It might be bad for society but good for an individual.
The rise of the Internet has two unsettling lessons for them. First: the humanist case for education subsidies is flimsy today because the Internet makes enlightenment practically free. Second: the humanist case for education subsidies was flimsy all along because the Internet proves low consumption of ideas and culture stems from apathy, not poverty or inconvenience.