I have to respectfully disagree with Dr. Ed Glaeser. I haven't read the book by Goldin and Katz, but the article itself seems to miss some important facets of formal education. It's true, there is broad empirical evidence that more education yields significantly more lifetime income. There is also some evidence that more educated societies grow faster (although there is also ample evidence that education and growth are unrelated).
However, before we advocate throwing huge amounts of money or resources at education, we need to be a bit more sophisticated in our thinking. After all, there is some evidence that the primary benefit of secondary and college education is not the facts you learn or clearer thinking, but the signal a diploma or degree sends of your natural ability. Now, signaling is good. Signaling is important.
But what about those individuals with lower ability levels? We have placed so much emphasis on education that anyone without a college degree is considered low class, unimportant, approaching worthless. Aside from the psychological damage equating education with personal value can cause, we end up creating a significant economic problem as well: educational rent-seeking.
Rent-seeking, in an economic sense, means expending resources trying to win a prize, wasting real resources in the process. The book The Overachievers provides graphic examples of the wasted time and resources many high school students spend to get into Ivy League colleges, despite the fact that only a small fraction of them can even fit in the classrooms. Rent-seeking is a topic we've recently discussed in my economic development class, which is why I bristle at Ed Glaeser's article.
I'm all for education. But we need to provide schooling that actually improves the minds of students, without equating education, earnings, and human worth. I want to see a government that encourages education, not just school funding.
HOW I FEEL WHEN I’M TWO WEEKS OUT FROM QUALS
9 years ago
Posts
6 comments:
I was working with some very unstable HEEEERBS!
I think I agree with you - the status of education in our culture as a sine qua non is pathetic, and (in my view) drags down the quality for real students. But I am curious: given that a college degree is so widely perceived as prerequisite for any kind of decent job - so they say; nobody consulted me on the matter - how do you propose to reverse that? I mean, like it or not, a bachelor(ette)'s degree has that status in our culture. So, seeing as it has already been corrupted, isn't giving one to everyone just a question of equality?
Joel, that's just the thing about rent seeking. If we send more and more people to college, one of two things will happen: either (1) we grant more and more degrees, which means they don't work as signals anymore and they won't get anyone "decent jobs" anymore; or (2) we have more and more people going to college and dropping out, thus wasting the resources of those who could do better (and get better jobs, btw) by learning to be plumbers, drivers, groundskeepers, etc.
The whole point is that more bachelors degrees won't actually get more and more people decent jobs. It will just waste resources with everyone trying to get the relatively fixed amount of "decent jobs," leaving those who don't end up in these jobs with less than when they started.
I exaggerate for effect of course; people do learn stuff in college. But the main point of the argument is, I believe, a true one.
I think we could start by fixing secondary education (high school). A high school degree used to mean the same thing a college degree means now. And with a decent high school education, no one needs gen eds, thus conserving more resources.
Although I have no proposals on how exactly to fix secondary education. NOT by throwing money at it, though.
of course 'decent jobs' is something of a fluid concept - I think most people take it to refer to jobs that don't involve manual labour. But is there any particular reason why that pool mightn't have elastic sides? I mean to say, why do you assume that more college-educated people will not simply lead to an expansion in white-collar trades (more businessmen and stockbrokers, for example)? Of course if everyone has such a job then, as the Scarlet Pimpernel reminds us, 'then the tailors will rule the land, and no-one will make the clothes; so much for French fashion and French politics.' But in our situation it seems like there will always be some manner of underclass to fix drains and such-like.
Or do you assume that greater numbers in schools will necessarily lead to a further contamination of standards? My complaint on the matter is academic: that to the extent universities have become vocational schools, there is less inclination for real study. But I think they turn out very competent bankers and middle managers. Has democracy so little pity as to pollute even the art of bean-counting?
/Deschooling Society/, Ivan Illich
Post a Comment