5 ms·

>"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 v

by 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?
        henrikschroder 5y ago
        - To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme and figures of speech, then ask two questions: 1) How artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered and 2) How important is that objective? Question 1 rates the poem's perfection; question 2 rates its importance. And once these questions have been answered, determining the poem's greatness becomes a relatively simple matter. If the poem's score for perfection is plotted on the horizontal of a graph-- - O Captain! My Captain!
- ekianjo 5y ago
  If Caplan is right it should be a personal choice not subsidized by government
  - mvhvv 5y ago
    It's entirely possible for Caplan to be correct about his material analysis, and that still not be the right conclusion. If the government doesn't subsidise education, then anything that doesn't promise a return is financially debilitating. Personal choice can't exist when your ability to eat and pay rent rely upon you making a specific decision. If you don't believe that humanities education has any kind of broader social value, then that's a whole other argument to make.
    - lelanthran 5y ago
      > It's entirely possible for Caplan to be correct about his material analysis, and that still not be the right conclusion. How do the critics know that it is not the right conclusion? Where are their numbers that support their conclusion. Look, I understand research is hard and that it may occasionally result in an incorrect conclusion from the data that was gathered. It happens. But it is not logically consistent to call the conclusion wrong when there is no data to support that position.
  - henrikschroder 5y ago
    That sounds like a utilitarian dystopia. Where I'm from, universities don't charge tuition, but you still get a small allowance as a student, and you can add on to that with a student loan to cover living costs. Loan interest and repayments are the same for everyone and based on your salary, it's all backed by the government, and if you don't pay back your loans before the age of 65, your loan is forgiven. Given all of this, it is much easier to calculate if an education is "worth it" or not than in the US market, because you can look at average salary progression in different fields to do a pretty good estimate of whether or not you'll repay your student loan before retirement. These calculations are routinely done by unions and career guides and university recruiters, and the usual suspects are worth it; STEM education, medicine, MBAs etc, while the more liberal-artsy you get, the more likely you are to never ever repay your student debt and therefore be a "bad" investment of educational budgets. And you know what? I'm fine with that. I'm fine with government subsidizing all of these "bad" educational programmes. For the fun of it. For the hell of it. Because some people like it. I am happily paying taxes so that someone else can get an education in ancient Peruvian anthropology with a minor in medieval French poetry for the absolute sheer fucking delight of it. The goal of society is happiness, not productivity.
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.

by nickff 5y ago

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?
        henrikschroder 5y ago
        - To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme and figures of speech, then ask two questions: 1) How artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered and 2) How important is that objective? Question 1 rates the poem's perfection; question 2 rates its importance. And once these questions have been answered, determining the poem's greatness becomes a relatively simple matter. If the poem's score for perfection is plotted on the horizontal of a graph-- - O Captain! My Captain!
ekianjo 5y ago
If Caplan is right it should be a personal choice not subsidized by government
- mvhvv 5y ago
  It's entirely possible for Caplan to be correct about his material analysis, and that still not be the right conclusion. If the government doesn't subsidise education, then anything that doesn't promise a return is financially debilitating. Personal choice can't exist when your ability to eat and pay rent rely upon you making a specific decision. If you don't believe that humanities education has any kind of broader social value, then that's a whole other argument to make.
  - lelanthran 5y ago
    > It's entirely possible for Caplan to be correct about his material analysis, and that still not be the right conclusion. How do the critics know that it is not the right conclusion? Where are their numbers that support their conclusion. Look, I understand research is hard and that it may occasionally result in an incorrect conclusion from the data that was gathered. It happens. But it is not logically consistent to call the conclusion wrong when there is no data to support that position.
- henrikschroder 5y ago
  That sounds like a utilitarian dystopia. Where I'm from, universities don't charge tuition, but you still get a small allowance as a student, and you can add on to that with a student loan to cover living costs. Loan interest and repayments are the same for everyone and based on your salary, it's all backed by the government, and if you don't pay back your loans before the age of 65, your loan is forgiven. Given all of this, it is much easier to calculate if an education is "worth it" or not than in the US market, because you can look at average salary progression in different fields to do a pretty good estimate of whether or not you'll repay your student loan before retirement. These calculations are routinely done by unions and career guides and university recruiters, and the usual suspects are worth it; STEM education, medicine, MBAs etc, while the more liberal-artsy you get, the more likely you are to never ever repay your student debt and therefore be a "bad" investment of educational budgets. And you know what? I'm fine with that. I'm fine with government subsidizing all of these "bad" educational programmes. For the fun of it. For the hell of it. Because some people like it. I am happily paying taxes so that someone else can get an education in ancient Peruvian anthropology with a minor in medieval French poetry for the absolute sheer fucking delight of it. The goal of society is happiness, not productivity.

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.