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>" His spreadsheets don't answer many questions I might have about such systemic changes, for example, would the reduction in college graduates reduce our natio

• Brian_K_White 5y ago
  Probably because any attempt to even reduce the topic to a spreadsheet is a case of "not even wrong". When someone says that they proved that say, studying art doesn't matter, with math, you don't bother arguing with their math.
  • nickff 5y ago
    >"Probably because any attempt to even reduce the topic to a spreadsheet is a case of "not even wrong"." But he didn't reduce it to a spreadsheet, he wrote a very thorough book. >"When someone says that they proved that say, studying art doesn't matter, with math, you don't bother arguing with their math." I am not sure what you think Caplan says. His book is mostly about the signalling and human capital models of education. The vast majority of post-secondary students say they attend post-secondary education in order to increase their future earnings, so Caplan calculates the financial impact of various degrees, and then figures out how much is attributable to the various factors.
    • henrikschroder 5y ago
      > His book is mostly about the signalling and human capital models of education. The vast majority of post-secondary students say they attend post-secondary education in order to increase their future earnings So what about the partying, making friends for life, and learning to be an adult? What about care-free student life as a carrot to incentivise young adults to go into careers that might not be good for them personally, but good for society? Or how about letting people have careers that are personally fulfilling, but not economically productive? Taking a year abroad to study in the middle of whatever university education you're in is a financially stupid decision. And yet, one I recommend every single student to do, because it's fun. A million years ago when I was nearing the end of high school, we all talked about which university educations were financially the best, and worst. Which educations "paid for themselves", and which ones didn't. Everyone knew. And then we all picked whatever we personally liked and thought we would enjoy working with in the future. Caplan might be 100% right. And also 100% irrelevant.
      • xyzzyz 5y ago
        If you read his book, like it was already suggested to you a couple of times, you'd know what he says about "care-free student life". This way, you would be able to address his actual positions, instead of arguing against a version of Caplan you've conjured in your mind, based on a single blog post and a few HN comments.
        • henrikschroder 5y ago
          So what does he say about care-free student life?
          • _y5hn 5y ago
            Do your own homework?
            • henrikschroder 5y ago
              There appears to be a bunch of people defending Caplan in this discussion, but most of that defence boils down to "read the entire book!" No, I'm not going to do that. And if you've read the entire book, and think I'm an idiot at this point, you are free to say so and disengage from this discussion. But the reason I'm so dismissive of his work is that the conclusion is ridiculous and the premise inherently flawed because education has inherently unquantifiable value that cannot be expressed in a spreadsheet. Ever. And the reason I'm dismissive of the defenders is that no-one seems to be able to come up with a succinct rebuttal to the criticisms fielded by me and others in this discussion other than "read the entire book!"
              • burrows 5y ago
                > education has inherently unquantifiable value that cannot be expressed in a spreadsheet. Ever. Any attempt at modeling any phenomena will fail to capture some aspect of that phenomena. So are you suggesting that all attempts at modeling are inherently flawed and must lead to ridiculous conclusions?
    • cycomanic 5y ago
      >I am not sure what you think Caplan says. His book is mostly about the signalling and human capital models of education. The vast majority of post-secondary students say they attend post-secondary education in order to increase their future earnings, so Caplan calculates the financial impact of various degrees, and then figures out how much is attributable to the various factors. So I was quite intrigued when I read the post initially and thought this is about the sociatal implications of education. I thought his "conclusions" go squarely against what I know about education, i.e. there are strong historical and geographical correlation with education, gdp, child mortality rates, child birth rates etc. (most actually correlate more with female education than male education), Roslings work is a good reference here. I was considering reading the book to see what the calculations are and how they refute those correlations. Now from what you're saying, he actually wrote a book with a click-bait title and which is about something very different from what the title implies (I guess "on the financial return of investment of a college education" would not have gotten the attention he wanted). And now he is complaining that education researchers are not engaging? I mean first, as far as I know most education research is not primarily interested in the financial ROIs of education (which is also highly country dependent), but if anything with the broad sociatal implications, but why should even those that might be interested engage if judging by the title Caplan is mainly interested in artificial controversy. As a side note, why is this even economics, I would have more put this under business/MBA type calculations. Maybe I'm biased by the German system where economics is Volkswirtschaftslehre and Business is BWL, i.e. economics is to do with the economy of countries/states/peoples?
      • xyzzyz 5y ago
        > I was considering reading the book to see what the calculations are and how they refute those correlations. He talks about this stuff too, for example, as education is correlated with health, he also estimates health benefits in his return to education calculations. The problem with many correlations that you mention is that they are, indeed, just correlation. There is scant evidence on there being casual relationship, or, for that matter, the direction of causality (eg., couldn’t it be that more prosperity allows people to consume more formal education, rather than formal education bringing about prosperity?). > Now from what you're saying, he actually wrote a book with a click-bait title and which is about something very different from what the title implies (I guess "on the financial return of investment of a college education" would not have gotten the attention he wanted). And now he is complaining that education researchers are not engaging? Financial return to education is just one chapter of his book. The book is actually really detailed, and covers multitude of aspects. In fact, in the very blog post you are commenting under, Caplan in explicitly says: > Some critics called me a philistine: “Education isn’t about making money; it’s about becoming a whole person.” Never mind that I wrote a whole chapter against this misinterpretation. Of course, nobody expects you to actually have read his book before you can express an opinion about topics it concerns, but maybe, before accusing him of clickbait and stirring artificial controversy, or his alleged bitterness that ed researchers are not engaging (he’s not even saying that, by the way), at least read the article you’re commenting under. > As a side note, why is this even economics This is a trend in academia over past decade or two. Basically, the traditional social science fields are so degenerate, dysfunctional, and ideologically rigid, that a lot of quantitatively-minded people who are keenly interested in social science topics, but are repelled by the reality of academic environment, instead flock to Economics, where rigor is higher, and ideology is less rigidly constraining. Look at new papers on NBER, for example: https://www.nber.org/papers https://www.nber.org/papers Half of them is just social science dressed as economics. That’s why Econ departments are growing.
• deleted 5y ago
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• majormajor 5y ago
  > His book talked about those things; the spreadsheets are just him 'showing his work'. I think Caplan is trying to highlight that despite the fact that many challenged his conclusions, almost nobody challenged his logic or calculations. Hermitian909 said "the spreadsheets are flawed by not including calculations for these additional levels of effect," and that claim seems pretty compelling: the calculations may be perfectly accurate and also perfectly useless because they say nothing about greater societal effects if everyone changed their behavior. The problem of individual strategy given the current system vs the question of what the system should be is a classic one, and the latter is far more complicated to compute. The "Moneyball"/baseball stats revolution shows a bit of this: as the things that were initially undervalued were no longer undervalued, "smart teams" had to continue changing. The system wasn't static. You say he talks about those things in his book in addition, but you can't call that "showing his work" if the work shown doesn't include the most relevant parts.
  • nickff 5y ago
    >"You say he talks about those things in his book in addition, but you can't call that "showing his work" if the work shown doesn't include the most relevant parts." The spreadsheet and book are complementary; you won't really understand either without reading both. In order to understand 'the work', you also have to know the question and the final answer.
• czbond 5y ago
  Because a majority of people are "feelers" (by nature) - they feel first, then run it through reasoning. An immature person of this nature would feel first, and then never proceed to use logic. In the same manner that a mature thinker uses logic first, then feels. An immature one may think, yet never also run the thoughts through the "feels department".