4 ms·

> 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 edu

> 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!
        burrows 5y ago
        Right. But I didn’t assert that all things can be gainfully modeled. I suggested that the non-specific incompleteness of a model isn’t a compelling reason not to use the model.
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    > [S]chool inculcates many attitudes that, regardless of their moral worth, impede on-the-job success. If you’re preparing kids for their adult roles, a year of work experience instills more suitable discipline and socialization than a year of school. > The imperfect overlap between the school ethic and the work ethic is especially blatant in modern American colleges. Fifty years ago, college was a full-time job. The typical student spent 40 hours a week in class or studying.98 Since the early 1960s, effort collapsed across the board. “Full-time” college students average 27 hours of academic work per week—and only 14 hours of studying. (...) > What are students doing with their extra free time? Having fun. Instead of being socialized for lives of boring work in hierarchical organizations, they’re being socialized for lives of play and self-expression. As Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa frostily remark in their Academically Adrift: >> If we presume that students are sleeping eight hours a night, which is a generous assumption given their tardiness and at times disheveled appearance in early morning classes, that leaves 85 hours a week for other activities. . . . What is this additional time spent on? It seems to be spent mostly on socializing and recreation. > A week in modern college is a great way to teach students that life is a picnic: >> A recent study of University of California undergraduates reported that while students spent thirteen hours a week studying, they also spent twelve hours socializing with friends, eleven hours using computers for fun, six hours watching television, six hours exercising, five hours on hobbies, and three hours on other forms of entertainment. > Instead of making students conform and submit, college showers students with acceptance. This doesn’t merely fail to prepare students for their future roles; it actively unprepares them. College raises students’ expectations to unrealistic heights, leaving future employers the chore of dragging graduates back down to earth. His book discusses your other points too, I strongly recommend it.
    - henrikschroder 5y ago
      > > What are students doing with their extra free time? Having fun. Instead of being socialized for lives of boring work in hierarchical organizations, they’re being socialized for lives of play and self-expression. If you think this is a bad thing, you are well and truly lost.
      - lelanthran 5y ago
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.

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!
        burrows 5y ago
        Right. But I didn’t assert that all things can be gainfully modeled. I suggested that the non-specific incompleteness of a model isn’t a compelling reason not to use the model.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  > [S]chool inculcates many attitudes that, regardless of their moral worth, impede on-the-job success. If you’re preparing kids for their adult roles, a year of work experience instills more suitable discipline and socialization than a year of school. > The imperfect overlap between the school ethic and the work ethic is especially blatant in modern American colleges. Fifty years ago, college was a full-time job. The typical student spent 40 hours a week in class or studying.98 Since the early 1960s, effort collapsed across the board. “Full-time” college students average 27 hours of academic work per week—and only 14 hours of studying. (...) > What are students doing with their extra free time? Having fun. Instead of being socialized for lives of boring work in hierarchical organizations, they’re being socialized for lives of play and self-expression. As Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa frostily remark in their Academically Adrift: >> If we presume that students are sleeping eight hours a night, which is a generous assumption given their tardiness and at times disheveled appearance in early morning classes, that leaves 85 hours a week for other activities. . . . What is this additional time spent on? It seems to be spent mostly on socializing and recreation. > A week in modern college is a great way to teach students that life is a picnic: >> A recent study of University of California undergraduates reported that while students spent thirteen hours a week studying, they also spent twelve hours socializing with friends, eleven hours using computers for fun, six hours watching television, six hours exercising, five hours on hobbies, and three hours on other forms of entertainment. > Instead of making students conform and submit, college showers students with acceptance. This doesn’t merely fail to prepare students for their future roles; it actively unprepares them. College raises students’ expectations to unrealistic heights, leaving future employers the chore of dragging graduates back down to earth. His book discusses your other points too, I strongly recommend it.
  - henrikschroder 5y ago
    > > What are students doing with their extra free time? Having fun. Instead of being socialized for lives of boring work in hierarchical organizations, they’re being socialized for lives of play and self-expression. If you think this is a bad thing, you are well and truly lost.
    - lelanthran 5y ago

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.