I'm surprised that nobody in this thread has brought up economist Bryan Caplan's 2nd most recent book, "The Case Against Education". This economist has looked

I'm surprised that nobody in this thread has brought up economist Bryan Caplan's 2nd most recent book, "The Case Against Education". This economist has looked at economic research on the effects of education, such as: * How well students retain information * How well students apply their knowledge in contexts outside of the classroom * How much college graduates make versus how much someone makes after dropping out of school at the last minute * How much more productive nations are after educating large swaths of their population * How many companies outright tell their new hires that the knowledge they gained in school needs to be forgotten, and that they need to start learning everything from scratch. And the conclusion Caplan comes to is that college education is a social signal, i.o.w. it's a zero-sum game where getting a college degree comes at the expense of everyone else with a college degree since the signal is degraded and is not as special as it once was.