The author is assuming familiarity with concepts and a body of research you do not appear to be familiar with. The fastest way to understand would be to read Br

The author is assuming familiarity with concepts and a body of research you do not appear to be familiar with. The fastest way to understand would be to read Bryan Caplan’s The Case Against Education[1]. The education system provides value by certifying potential employees/partners/mates as being of a certain quality. That’s signaling. Some of the quality is due to something the educational institute did, a treatment effect. Most of what selective institutes signal isn’t treatment effect though, it’s selection effects. Harvard matriculants we’re going to be successful with or without Harvard and the signal Harvard provides doesn’t distinguish much between them given the extremely low drop out rate, high grades and low variability of said grades. Human capital is what educational institutes add, what they’re supposed to do, teaching skills someone somewhere cares about. Given the amount Byrne reads I feel quite certain he values education highly. Schooling he may be more or less indifferent to as a college dropout. Lambda has a superior model for education as treatment effect in its very narrow field to almost all universities given that the number that actually want to train software engineers is very low. Job training is what people want and they can do it well. This is good because giving people things they want and making their lives better is good. As to universities and fun most people have a great time at university. Having free time, not working, being away from home, alcohol, other things, attempting to date, these are great. Many more people have fond memories of university because it was fun than because of anything they learned. It’s not sarcasm. Many people think most of education is socially wasteful if privately beneficial because it’s true. [1]I reviewed it. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/cua2dr/review_the_case_against_education_bryan_caplan/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/cua2dr/review_the...