Summary of The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan

The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan was very interesting overall. It changed the way I think about education.

The book aims to explain the large positive correlation between education and pay. There are three possible explanations:

• Human capital: education 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 to get educated

While all three factors likely play a role, the big idea of the book is that education's value is mostly from signaling, with success in school signaling not only intelligence, but also work ethic and conformity.  Caplan presents compelling evidence for this position:

• School teaches subjects that aren't useful to employers and fails to teach many that are.
• Most of the gains from education only come at the end when you get the diploma, they do not accrue gradually as you become more educated while in school.
• The answer to the question "What is more effective at getting a good job: Having a CMU education or a CMU degree ?" is not nearly as obvious as the answer to "What is more effective at surviving alone in the woods: being trained in survival training or having a survival training certificate ?".
• Students don't retain much of what they are taught.

If the signaling hypothesis is largely correct, education would still be a good investment personally, but not societally. It follows that there ought to be less public subsidies for education. The average level of education has no net effect (other than cost!). If everyone would be given full scholarship to college, then everyone is forced to get more advanced degrees to effectively signal. Decreasing the average education thus reduces total cost without affecting total workforce skill or inequality.

Another corollary of the mostly-signaling theory is that education's position in society is robust against technological advances. Conformity is one of the main signals education sends. However, unconventionally signaling conformity actually signals nonconformity. Because of a strong punishment to first movers, education's role can only be unseated by an unlikely large collective action of society.

Again, I would highly recommend the book and was largely convinced by its arguments.  It was a little too detailed for me in places but I'm glad the detail is there; I could easily skip it and I suspect others may want it.