Case Against Education

Very interesting overall. Changed the way I think about education.

Observation: There is a huge positive correlation between education and pay.

Three possible explanations:

• human capital: eduction makes people better/more effective workers
• signaling: education shows employers who the better workers are
• correlation w/o causation: better workers are the type of people who want get educated

(Truth is likely some combination of all three.)

The big idea of the book is that Education is mostly signaling. In which case education is a good investment personally, but not societally. It then follows that there ought to be less subsidies for education.

Social justice objection to cutting education subsidies

Libertarianism implies a strong bias against taxpayer support for anything including education. ("Separation of state education and state")

Educations position in society is robust against technological advances

Education not just for "vocational training"

• "Learn how to think"
• create well informed citizenry
• Arts/Humanities appritiation

Bottom line: There is little or no evidence for this in society even if we assume education is responsible for all of it.