With the development of society, the practical value of education has begun to attract people's attention, in the eyes of George Mason University economics professor Brian Kaplan, under diploma inflation, education needs to consider investment and return. In his view, the current investment in education in the United States is too high, and the number of talents who can create social value is not ideal...
Wen 丨 Zhang Nan ed
Recently, the Wall Street Journal released a poll in which 56% of Americans believe that a degree is no longer worth the time and money.
The surge in graduate earnings in rich countries began in the 80s of the 20th century. The wage gap between those with and without a bachelor's degree widens the wage gap, which has also been called the beginning of the "college premium" spike. But now, that premium has either stagnated or begun to fall, while the cost of going to college and earning a degree continues to rise.
In the United States, the average out-of-pocket cost of a bachelor's degree student (or what we often call an undergraduate) per year increased from $2,300 around 1970 to about $8,000 in 2018 in real terms. The average return on a bachelor's degree in the U.S. is estimated to be about 14 percent, up from 16 percent two decades ago.
Bryan Caplan, a professor of economics at George Mason University, wrote "The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money," in his 2018 book, "The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money." Money) caused great controversy at the time for its deviant views.
Five years later, the Chinese edition of the book, "The Waste of Education", was introduced and published by China Translation Press. Reading it now, many of the views written by this cold-too-cruel economics professor are actually true.
After graduating from Berkeley with an undergraduate and a Ph.D. from Princeton, Kaplan has been teaching economics at George Mason University and has become a tenured professor.
Personally, American education treats him well, and can even be said to be very good. With a small amount of work, a decent salary, or a way of working that he loves, it stands to reason that he should not "eat and smash" and attack the American education system. But as he looks back on half of his life and reflects on the past, he becomes more convinced that the current education system wastes a lot of time and money.
Speeches, interviews, articles, over the years, Kaplan has spared no effort in attacking the American education system. In his view, the current investment in education in the United States is too high, and the benefits, that is, the number of talents who can create social value, are not ideal. He therefore recommended that the Government reduce spending on education.
With questions about the education system, Kaplan wrote this book with six years of research, a large number of examples, and statistical data to prove to readers the social problems caused by excessive education in the contemporary American education system, such as increased social costs, lower education premiums, and academic inflation.
It should be emphasized that Kaplan's original intention in writing this book was not to advise everyone to go to school less or not to go to school.
For individuals, education pays off, there's no doubt about it. But in everything, being partially correct doesn't necessarily mean being right overall. It's like in a theater, everyone is sitting in the audience, at this time, if someone wants to get a better view, the fastest way is to get up from their seat, but when everyone stands up, can everyone get a better view? The answer is self-explanatory.
Although this book is a critique of American education, it is also enlightening for us in the pulse of our time. Through the cold eyes of this economist, we can also think again: the key issues of academic inflation, education investment and learning motivation.
The proportion of signal effects is high
Education is bound to turn into a war of attrition
In 2021, a study in the United States reported that the return on bachelor's degrees was calculated based on the education investment and return data of nearly 30,000 college students.
On the premise that all graduates are successful, the median net return for a bachelor's degree is $306,000.
Note: In this report, net returns = lifetime earnings growth from degrees – direct and indirect costs to universities. Simply put, students who earn a degree have a difference in income than their peers who go directly to work after high school.
However, data such as averages and medians are often deceptive. The harsh truth is that some degrees (such as engineering, computer science, economics, etc.) are worth millions of dollars, while others (including art, philosophy, religion, and psychology, etc.) have no net financial value at all.
After factoring in the risk of not graduating, the median return on investment for a bachelor's degree drops to $129,000. There are also more than a quarter of degree programs with negative ROI. In other words, these degree programs make students worse off financially than if they had never attended college.
If the practical value of education is really as people believe, and more and more people enter universities and obtain degrees, the corresponding result should be an increase in the productivity of the entire society, but the reality is not the same, but the employment imbalance is becoming more and more serious.
What is employment imbalance? Ph.D. in astronomy working as waitresses, young people with a master's degree in arts work as bartenders, or we're more familiar with examples, Master 985 delivery and so on. In short, the education required to find a job far exceeds the level of education you actually need to get a job.
If you look at it from the point of view of human resource costs, this does not make sense at all. But what if you look at it in terms of "signal model"? All employers are looking for employees with high intelligence, serious responsibility, and willingness to obey, and a more advanced degree certificate, bachelor's, master's, doctorate... It can just send these three characteristics to the outside world.
In Kaplan's view, 50%-80% of the current function of education is to send signals. Only the remaining little bit is what we think is the value of human resources that "turns stones into gold".
Bryan Caplan
If you still think this conclusion is a bit extreme, then imagine this: either you can receive a Princeton education but no diploma, or you can get a Princeton diploma but cannot experience the education process, you can only choose one of the two, which one will you choose?
Or just ask, what's the best thing about going to Princeton? Study, or make people believe you're smart?
Princeton University has no door control, and anyone can push the door in to listen to lectures and even participate in student activities. Kaplan himself has been sharing his courses at George Mason University for free online.
But, in fact, almost no one does that. Because only that diploma can send a signal to employers. And the signal is a war of internal attrition.
Recognizing the link between academic success and job achievement, employers begin to use educational background as a stepping stone to recruitment;
Smart, talented people recognize this and begin to commit to educational success in order to achieve their career ambitions later on;
Among smart, talented people, fewer people with poor educational backgrounds further strengthen the link between academic success and work achievement.
In a cycle of self-validation, young people have the option of getting involved in the game, extending their years of education and earning more advanced degrees.
Of course, there are other ways to transmit this signal. For example, in interviews, wearing professional suits is more sincere than wearing fancy clothes, but how can this be compared with the value of diplomas that the whole society obeys - the act of actively exiting this signal game itself sends a signal of "unwillingness to obey".
For Kaplan, education is like contracting a kind of "locked-in syndrome," often referred to as "involution," where everyone is aware of the problem but powerless to change anything.
Useless learning
Almost everywhere
Is everything in education a signal? Is the meaning of reading just to get that diploma to demonstrate ability?
Many mainstream labor economists are frustrated by Kaplan's conclusions. Even by the most permissive criteria, Kaplan's view does not please them: education is not a pure signal, but a signal is the main value of education. If a fair share of human capital versus signal capital in the education premium is to be set, Kaplan argues that 10:40 is acceptable.
In other words, how many practical job skills students learn in school are scarce in Kaplan's view.
Even during the years of the pandemic, when people complained about how much learning was undermined by online classes, Kaplan scoffed, "as if kids were actually learning a lot while sitting in a classroom." ”
1. Most of what is taught in school is useless
What each school teaches students can be divided into useful and useless. This is acceptable, and every school cannot be a gigafactory for developing skills. But the question is, what is the ratio of the two?
Taking high school as an example, Kaplan divides subjects into three categories: high, high and low according to the practicality of curriculum knowledge in work. The column height indicates the proportion of time students spend on these subjects out of total study time.
Source: "The Waste of Education"
"High practicality" means that the knowledge of the subject can improve students' performance in most occupations, and most students in the class can use it later, but students spend no more than one-third of the time in these subjects;
"Low practicality" means that the knowledge of the subject may improve students' performance in a very small number of occupations, and the most likely use may be students who choose to become teachers of the subject in the future. Students spend more than 40% of their time on these subjects.
Even for "practical" subjects, the teaching method in school is more academic than practical. Taking mathematics as an example, almost all modern occupations require a little mathematical knowledge, but mathematics knowledge in high school mathematics classes is rarely needed.
Source: "The Waste of Education"
In Kaplan's view, this curriculum is probably only a little more practical than "classical education", which still uses Greek or Latin as the main teaching content. Building students' skills? There's really no way to talk about it.
When it comes to college, Kaplan is an insider who is even more unceremonious, university teachers only teach what they are interested in or capable of, and most of them have never had real workplace experience.
2. The learning effect is beautified by the score
And that's not even about the deadliest problem: knowledge retention.
Even if schooling does improve students' scores, the knowledge acquired by students can be fleeting. The joke that teachers hang on their lips may not be a joke: "After a summer vacation, it will all be returned to the teacher." ”
A large study involving thousands of people, involving high school students and adults aged 19-84, tested people's knowledge of algebra and geometry. The results found that most of the subjects who had completed relevant courses in high school forgot half of the content within 5 years, and almost all of them in 25 years.
More basic and practical literacy and numeracy skills are also in trouble.
In 2003, the U.S. Department of Education randomly selected 18,000 people to take the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL). The simplicity of the questions and the low standard made the results staggering, with only 13% reaching the "level of proficiency".
It would be even more interesting if it were classified by educational level. Less than a third of college graduates reach the level of what we think of as freshmen.
Is the result bleak because the topic is too difficult? Look at the question: If $0.05 per gallon of oil is cheaper, how much cheaper can it be to add 140 gallons of oil? Less than half of the people answered this question correctly. Considering that it is a multiple-choice question, it cannot be ruled out that someone guessed correctly based on luck, and the real situation is simply unbearable to look at.
Of course, as many people believe, "When one forgets what one learns in school, the rest is education." Educators insist that no matter what subject students study, in the end they learn "how to learn" or "how to think."
But whether it's turning to more than a century of research on "learning transfer theory" or looking at the test at hand, Kaplan says bluntly: Draw inferences? Inexistent.
One survey on the impact of education on thinking skills asked a series of oral questions to freshmen and graduates at the high school, college and graduate levels, such as "Does television violence lead to more real-world violence?" "Can the collection of disposal fees on recyclable waste significantly reduce waste emissions?" to test critical thinking skills.
The answer is open-ended, there is no right or wrong, as long as you can discuss and put forward views on both sides of the positive and negative sides. It turns out that education does improve students' critical thinking skills, but the small amount is inevitably disappointing.
It takes years of study, but it is impossible to complete the analysis and reasoning of daily events. Doesn't that tell the story?
No wonder psychologist Douglas K. Detterman says students are not expected to draw inferences. "Education, even graduate education, is nothing more than helping students get information... I only make it clear to students where a particular skill will be used in the future. ”
3. Improvement of non-cognitive ability? wishful thinking
People outside the education community will discuss other aspects of the school more pragmatically, such as learning self-discipline, networking, and so on.
This sounds reasonable, and perhaps education also plays an important function: to prepare students for future job roles in advance. But the problem is that schools instill not vocational requirements, but school requirements. These two requirements are not completely aligned, and sometimes the philosophy instilled in students in schools hinders their achievement at work.
Especially for the definition and judgment of effectiveness, schools value abstract understanding rather than practical utility - when it comes to cultivating children's self-discipline, preparing for later life, and learning to deal with people, a year's work experience is much more useful than a year's education.
As for networking, it is also the key reason why parents spare no effort to support their children to hit prestigious schools. After all, the more famous the school, the higher the likelihood of obtaining high-quality connections in the school.
However, according to Kaplan's observation, this so-called network may never come in handy. Unless it is a highly professional discipline such as law and medicine, students will have the opportunity to "mutually benefit" in their future work. Often, connections that bring great rewards are almost always possible after graduation and finding their place in the brutal business world.
The era of academic qualifications
It will eventually lead to the era of academic ability
Useless education brings great rewards. This has been true for a long time, and to this day, the idea of "reading books to change destiny" is still actionable and promising for individuals.
But Kaplan, who took a holistic view, saw the cost: stagnant social returns to education.
The pie isn't getting bigger, so it will face the day when it's "not enough points" — right now — and look at the young people with elite college degrees who are running into a wall in the job market, where diploma inflation has reached an incredible level.
So, what exactly should be done for every ordinary person?
Starting with the target value of chasing degrees, according to Kaplan's data analysis, after getting a bachelor's degree (that is, graduating from a bachelor's degree), the education premium peaks. The return rate on a master's degree is only 10% for the best students.
Source: "The Waste of Education"
In layman's terms, for most ordinary people who go to college and look for a job, it is enough to read until they graduate from college.
Having obtained a bachelor's degree and in terms of cognitive abilities, personality, background and all other characteristics, conforming to the general characteristics of this population, such a student should be in the 73rd percentile according to the results of cognitive ability tests. Kaplan calls it a "good student" sample.
"Good students" should go to college, provided they calculate their costs and the returns they can expect.
The first is the most direct material input and return.
The tuition fees of private universities in the United States are expensive, and if you add the huge investment in studying private high schools and preparing for college applications, it is also very likely that many young people will not earn back tuition fees for several years after graduation. In contrast, studying at a public university with good quality and low prices is a good choice.
Second, choose a major that is practical.
STEM majors (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) rank first, and economics and business are also good choices. The more delicious the professional, the richer the return indeed brings; For unpopular and elegant art majors, zero returns and negative returns are also possible.
Finally, the ability to learn and willingness to learn are also important.
Given that costs and returns cannot be entirely in monetary terms, this is not only about the happiness of learners themselves, but also likely to affect the chances of successful graduation. As mentioned earlier, without the diploma after graduation, the sunk cost of the previous years would almost be lost.
Why bring out the "good students" alone? Kaplan reluctantly said that education does not pay off much for "middle students" (in the 41st percentile), let alone "poor students" (in the 24th percentile).
Going to college is a terrible investment for weaker students. Going to vocational training and finding a job is much more practical than going to university.
That's why, Kaplan argues, we need less education, but we need more vocational education.
From a social point of view, traditional education to chase social status is a zero-sum game, while vocational education that chases skills training is not. Social status is always normally distributed, but average skills can be improved. Only in this way can the dilemma of education inflation be broken.
Bibliography:
1. The Wallstreet Journal: For a Good Job by 30, Do This in Your 20s, Lindsay Ellis
2. FREOPP.org: Is College Worth It? A Comprehensive Return on Investment Analysis, Preston Cooper
3. The New York Times: School Is for Wasting Time and Money, Bryan Caplan
4. Youtube: A Conversation With Bryan Caplan on Signaling, Education, and Employment, James Dunning