The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money
Bryan Caplan
Princeton, 2018, 395 pages

Reviewed by T. Nelson

An old TV commercial from CLEP, a place that gives college credit for subjects learned outside the classroom, showed Abe Lincoln failing a job interview. The employer says: “Look, Lincoln, I know you're a smart guy, you know you're a smart guy; but you ain't goin' nowhere without that sheepskin, fella.”

Bryan Caplan says that the economic value of a college degree is mostly from ‘signaling.’ Its main purpose is not to increase human capital, as some claim, but to tell an employer that the student is intelligent, conscien­tious and conformist. Caplan guesses the ratio is 80% signaling to 20% skill acquisition. That 80% is “an incinerator that burns society's money, time, and brains in a futile attempt to make everyone look special.” He acknowledges that, of course, some students do, on occasion, learn useful skills. But our educational system is broken because its credentialing function far outweighs its skill-imparting function. This, he says, is the pathway to national stagnation.

Alternatives such as online education will never pose a chal­lenge to the uni­vers­ity system, says Caplan, because they impart only learned skills, not credentials.

Caplan's second point is that the signaling (credentialing) function of schools and universities benefits some individuals and harms others in equal measure. Therefore it is benefit-neutral toward society in general. Since it doesn't benefit society, government should not be subsidizing it. He recommends cutting education spending: a “separation of education and state.”

His third point is that, by a strict economic calculation, taking into account lifetime income and overall happiness, college is not cost-effective for most students. His arguments are valuable for potential students to consider.

Signaling

Few people would be more receptive to the idea of defunding the universities than I am. I was in school for twenty years and hated every second of it. Remember that one kid sitting in the back reading Being and Nothingness in analysis class? That was me. So I agree, but his argument misses the point here: a degree doesn't just signal character traits; it's documentation that you have specific knowledge, or at least a possible awareness, however dim, that such knowledge exists; or, at a minimum, a receptiveness to the idea that there is such a thing as knowledge.

Bryan Caplan says you can attend Princeton for free and get the same education as someone who paid tuition, but nobody would hire you. This is true, but why? The reason is that without proof, and without documented exam results, you could simply lie, and they'd have to spend thousands of dollars testing you. They might get a thousand applicants; if they tested all of them, it would cost a million bucks, and eat up the entire salary of the winner for the next 20–30 years. From an economic perspective, it's better to make the applicant pay for it: it's cheaper to do it once for each applicant than repeatedly for each job opening.

I'm also not so sure that conformity is desirable for employers. What employer would want someone from an institution in which students are deprived of physical exercise, and then forced to take drugs when they become restless? I suppose it depends on the type of job. Conformity and unimaginativeness may be valuable for bureaucratic jobs, but these days a diploma is more like a certificate of release from a mental institution.

The problem is that we have few alternatives. Home schooling is viable only for the small and decreasing number of students who have a healthy family environment. Caplan suggests apprentice­ships as an alternative to trade schools. The challenge is certifying their quality, which is a roundabout way of saying that credentials still matter.

Why is credentialing a problem?

Caplan makes a sound economic argument, but from an employer's point of view, the problem with credent­ialing is that it's inaccurate. I once interviewed a candidate for a research assistant job. He had an M.D. degree. He dressed well and spoke intelligently. He even showed up for the interview on time. I was shocked! But when I showed him around the lab, it was clear he couldn't do the job. He didn't know what a pressure regulator was for. He didn't know how to make a ten millimolar solution. He had no idea what a cuvette or a stirring bar was. The credentialing system had utterly failed.

These are elementary lab skills. Yes, he could have learned on the job. But people underestimate how long that takes, and how dangerous an employee can be in the meantime. If I had turned that guy loose in the lab, his first six months would have been spent screwing up and asking dumb questions. Why should I have used nitrogen instead of CO₂? Why did this acid spray all over me when I added water to it? Where did that wall go, and what are all these weird orangey flamey things shooting up everywhere?