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Notice that every time someone writes an article about how some people are not cut out for higher education, it's always other people's kids who should avoid it

Notice that every time someone writes an article about how some people are not cut out for higher education, it's always other people's kids who should avoid it. I'd like to know what Bryan Caplan's (the author) kids are up to these days. Are they welders? Plumbers? That credential inflation is a topic of this article really shows the author's hand: someone keep these people out of higher ed, they don't deserve it and they're just making it harder for my offspring to differentiate themselves in the job market.

JasonFruit 9y ago
I've made the same argument as the writer, and I have children. Frankly, I'm not sure how to advise them when the time comes. It may well be that for some, I'd suggest a college education, while for others, I might suggest learning a trade and getting ahead in it while they're young. That is to say, I think your comment makes a conclusion based on your assumptions about people who question the universal value of higher education, and you don't have anything real to back it up.
- intopieces 9y ago
  I question the universal value of higher education, too. But I come to a different conclusion: that is, that education ought to be reformed to make it more universally valuable, not systematically kept from the people it failed.
- jimmaswell 9y ago
  Here's one argument against college education for jobs: you're very likely to be forced to move far from home to find any work in your field. There just weren't programming jobs within an hour of me in upper NY so I had to move to a place in New Jersey that I don't like that much out of necessity. I'm sure it would've went the same for chemical engineering or whatever else with very few exceptions, maybe law or medicine. If I'd taken a trade like electrical work or plumbing I could live anywhere I wanted - everyone has toilets and wires - but now I'm at the mercy of the programming job market until I can transition to remote work, so it'll be years until I get to live somewhere to my preference. Where do you live? If it's not in or very close to highly dense areas, encourage trades if you don't want to have to take a plane or drive hours to visit your grandchildren.
  - elguyosupremo 9y ago
    While I get your point it should also be noted that an area can only sustain so many plumbers and electricians. It's not like there are hundreds of new plumber jobs opening up every year, especially in a place like Upstate NY with a shitty economy. They need people to get educated but then come back home and help improve the home economy. Of course I say this as someone who moved from Upstate NY to Texas for work.
    - IkmoIkmo 9y ago
      True, but there's still a difference. If you graduate with 50k student debt, say in CS, you're absolutely urged to work in your niche field where you're compensated for your new expertise and can pay back the loan. That may mean moving to a particular place with an industry that caters to this niche. If you did vocational (e.g. apprenticeship) schooling and graduate with little or no debt, that urgency is far smaller, and it tends to be much less of a niche. i.e., there's less debt pressure to pursue work that adequately compensates for your new knowledge, and there's more places (nearby) as you don't work in a niche as much.
- barrkel 9y ago
  The fact is, people perceive trades as socially inferior to white collar careers requiring college. This is completely independent of earning potential, mind. And software engineering is mostly a trade. The fact that you do it indoors, in offices, without getting your hands dirty is deceptive; it's conceptually very similar to construction, mechanics, plumbing, etc.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ThrustVectoring 9y ago
>Notice that every time someone writes an article about how some people are not cut out for higher education, it's always other people's kids who should avoid it. Well, yeah. That's the problem with positional goods in general. It's not that they aren't valuable to acquire or are bad for the recipients. It's that the competition is zero-sum, so we should be using our coordination mechanisms to reduce the total amount done. Like, someone advocating a yacht tax wouldn't turn down owning a yacht. They simply think society is better off with fewer and less luxurious yachts in general, compared to the other things we could be doing with our effort.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
taneq 9y ago
Do you not think the venue here might have an impact on that? If my kids love working with their hands, hate being cooped up inside, and find maths and science boring, I would absolutely suggest they learn a trade. There are myriad opportunities for a smart, hardworking tradesperson, especially as more and more kids are pressured into university who would be more suited to an apprenticeship. Far better for them to be a smart, capable sparky or metalworker than to be stuck churning out mediocre 'enterprise' software and hating their job.
IkmoIkmo 9y ago
Well, if you read the article, he addresses this. > What does this mean for the individual student? Would I advise an academically well-prepared 18-year-old to skip college because she won’t learn much of value? Absolutely not. Studying irrelevancies for the next four years will impress future employers and raise her income potential. If she tried to leap straight into her first white-collar job, insisting, “I have the right stuff to graduate, I just choose not to,” employers wouldn’t believe her. To unilaterally curtail your education is to relegate yourself to a lower-quality pool of workers. For the individual, college pays. > This does not mean, however, that higher education paves the way to general prosperity or social justice. When we look at countries around the world, a year of education appears to raise an individual’s income by 8 to 11 percent. By contrast, increasing education across a country’s population by an average of one year per person raises the national income by only 1 to 3 percent. In other words, education enriches individuals much more than it enriches nations. Essentially he makes the point that, indeed if he were a parent or would advise a parent or a student, he'd argue today, you absolutely should get a college degree. 'For the individual, college pays'. But that as a matter of national policy, we should realise there are zero-sum aspects to education, i.e. a person getting a degree competes better for attaining a job than a person without a degree, but that this doesn't translate into higher productivity / value. In other words, college should not be pursued as a national policy like say a Bernie Sanders often talks about. And that makes sense. I'm all for distributive justice, universal education is part of that equation. But if governments and companies receive plenty of data that the marginal return of education approaches zero, they should act accordingly and fight back in some manner. And that makes sense. For example, I can buy and eat meat while still saying that as a society, we shouldn't eat as much meat, and that we should double our taxes on them. Or sugar. Or cigs. Or SUVs. Or indeed, I can make use of a tax loophole while voting for a party that wants to end the loophole. Just because I'm self-interested in the short-term, doesn't mean that I don't want society to be shaped to make all of us better off in the long-term.
- intopieces 9y ago
  The conclusion doesn't necessarily follow from the premise; that is, the antidote to the zero-sum aspects of education are not necessarily less education. As well, the conclusion made by the author and most of his cohorts is from a purely economic standpoint. As if there were no intrinsic value to the enrichment of the human mind. As if the economic output of an individual were his sole measure of worth. You're essentially saying: "education is only worth investing in for some people." That's exactly what the author is saying: "Only academically well-prepared 18-year-olds ought to go to college." Ignoring that being 'academically well prepared' itself is influenced by many, many factors: race, income, test-taking aptitude, geographic location, age... Education is for everyone. Higher education -- community college -- is for everyone. It is worth investing in for everyone who wants it. That it doesn't bear out on the balance sheet of economics is a failure of economic measurement and the education system, not of education itself.

JasonFruit 9y ago

I've made the same argument as the writer, and I have children. Frankly, I'm not sure how to advise them when the time comes. It may well be that for some, I'd suggest a college education, while for others, I might suggest learning a trade and getting ahead in it while they're young. That is to say, I think your comment makes a conclusion based on your assumptions about people who question the universal value of higher education, and you don't have anything real to back it up.

intopieces 9y ago
I question the universal value of higher education, too. But I come to a different conclusion: that is, that education ought to be reformed to make it more universally valuable, not systematically kept from the people it failed.
jimmaswell 9y ago
Here's one argument against college education for jobs: you're very likely to be forced to move far from home to find any work in your field. There just weren't programming jobs within an hour of me in upper NY so I had to move to a place in New Jersey that I don't like that much out of necessity. I'm sure it would've went the same for chemical engineering or whatever else with very few exceptions, maybe law or medicine. If I'd taken a trade like electrical work or plumbing I could live anywhere I wanted - everyone has toilets and wires - but now I'm at the mercy of the programming job market until I can transition to remote work, so it'll be years until I get to live somewhere to my preference. Where do you live? If it's not in or very close to highly dense areas, encourage trades if you don't want to have to take a plane or drive hours to visit your grandchildren.
- elguyosupremo 9y ago
  While I get your point it should also be noted that an area can only sustain so many plumbers and electricians. It's not like there are hundreds of new plumber jobs opening up every year, especially in a place like Upstate NY with a shitty economy. They need people to get educated but then come back home and help improve the home economy. Of course I say this as someone who moved from Upstate NY to Texas for work.
  - IkmoIkmo 9y ago
    True, but there's still a difference. If you graduate with 50k student debt, say in CS, you're absolutely urged to work in your niche field where you're compensated for your new expertise and can pay back the loan. That may mean moving to a particular place with an industry that caters to this niche. If you did vocational (e.g. apprenticeship) schooling and graduate with little or no debt, that urgency is far smaller, and it tends to be much less of a niche. i.e., there's less debt pressure to pursue work that adequately compensates for your new knowledge, and there's more places (nearby) as you don't work in a niche as much.
barrkel 9y ago
The fact is, people perceive trades as socially inferior to white collar careers requiring college. This is completely independent of earning potential, mind. And software engineering is mostly a trade. The fact that you do it indoors, in offices, without getting your hands dirty is deceptive; it's conceptually very similar to construction, mechanics, plumbing, etc.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ThrustVectoring 9y ago

>Notice that every time someone writes an article about how some people are not cut out for higher education, it's always other people's kids who should avoid it. Well, yeah. That's the problem with positional goods in general. It's not that they aren't valuable to acquire or are bad for the recipients. It's that the competition is zero-sum, so we should be using our coordination mechanisms to reduce the total amount done. Like, someone advocating a yacht tax wouldn't turn down owning a yacht. They simply think society is better off with fewer and less luxurious yachts in general, compared to the other things we could be doing with our effort.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

taneq 9y ago

Do you not think the venue here might have an impact on that? If my kids love working with their hands, hate being cooped up inside, and find maths and science boring, I would absolutely suggest they learn a trade. There are myriad opportunities for a smart, hardworking tradesperson, especially as more and more kids are pressured into university who would be more suited to an apprenticeship. Far better for them to be a smart, capable sparky or metalworker than to be stuck churning out mediocre 'enterprise' software and hating their job.

IkmoIkmo 9y ago

Well, if you read the article, he addresses this. > What does this mean for the individual student? Would I advise an academically well-prepared 18-year-old to skip college because she won’t learn much of value? Absolutely not. Studying irrelevancies for the next four years will impress future employers and raise her income potential. If she tried to leap straight into her first white-collar job, insisting, “I have the right stuff to graduate, I just choose not to,” employers wouldn’t believe her. To unilaterally curtail your education is to relegate yourself to a lower-quality pool of workers. For the individual, college pays. > This does not mean, however, that higher education paves the way to general prosperity or social justice. When we look at countries around the world, a year of education appears to raise an individual’s income by 8 to 11 percent. By contrast, increasing education across a country’s population by an average of one year per person raises the national income by only 1 to 3 percent. In other words, education enriches individuals much more than it enriches nations. Essentially he makes the point that, indeed if he were a parent or would advise a parent or a student, he'd argue today, you absolutely should get a college degree. 'For the individual, college pays'. But that as a matter of national policy, we should realise there are zero-sum aspects to education, i.e. a person getting a degree competes better for attaining a job than a person without a degree, but that this doesn't translate into higher productivity / value. In other words, college should not be pursued as a national policy like say a Bernie Sanders often talks about. And that makes sense. I'm all for distributive justice, universal education is part of that equation. But if governments and companies receive plenty of data that the marginal return of education approaches zero, they should act accordingly and fight back in some manner. And that makes sense. For example, I can buy and eat meat while still saying that as a society, we shouldn't eat as much meat, and that we should double our taxes on them. Or sugar. Or cigs. Or SUVs. Or indeed, I can make use of a tax loophole while voting for a party that wants to end the loophole. Just because I'm self-interested in the short-term, doesn't mean that I don't want society to be shaped to make all of us better off in the long-term.

intopieces 9y ago
The conclusion doesn't necessarily follow from the premise; that is, the antidote to the zero-sum aspects of education are not necessarily less education. As well, the conclusion made by the author and most of his cohorts is from a purely economic standpoint. As if there were no intrinsic value to the enrichment of the human mind. As if the economic output of an individual were his sole measure of worth. You're essentially saying: "education is only worth investing in for some people." That's exactly what the author is saying: "Only academically well-prepared 18-year-olds ought to go to college." Ignoring that being 'academically well prepared' itself is influenced by many, many factors: race, income, test-taking aptitude, geographic location, age... Education is for everyone. Higher education -- community college -- is for everyone. It is worth investing in for everyone who wants it. That it doesn't bear out on the balance sheet of economics is a failure of economic measurement and the education system, not of education itself.