I really hated seeing both your comments and that article. It is so misguided. And your comments show that you do not seem to understand two very fundamental concepts: about the mind and its relationship to education.
Education is not about getting a job per se, although it will help in that regard, but not because you learn something specific, but because a developed mind can do much more than an undeveloped mind. The mind is like the body, it needs exercise to work well.
The thesis of education is this: We are born animals with an animal mind adapted to a nomadic life. Our mind is not hardwired or adapted to the modern world we have built, or abstract thinking. To negotiate that world we must develop a new existential mind from scratch. We see this awareness by societies awareness we need K through 12 for everybody. But to think the mind had reached its full potential after 12 years is folly. the mind never reaches its full potential. Study just makes it smarter and smarter and smarter. And smart can find jobs better than not so smart.
1) The true value of college: "is development of the mind".
2) What does development of the mind mean and how is it achieved?
There is a book "Outlier" which was also highlighted in Scientific American and "MInd magazine". The thesis is that it takes 10 years to develop the "expert mind". The study was done with chess players.
If you test people before they go to college and after the go to college, you will find a huge superiority in their knowledge, logic and ability to understand abstract concepts.
When I started college, I was very ignorant having a terrible high school experience because of my need to work and home life. It took me a week to write a terrible 500 word paper. Today I can dictate one in two/three minutes with no errors.
When I started college I had no idea the differences in the two major political parties, or much of anything else. When I graduated with my BS degree I had discovered and understood existentialism.
I watched how all of us developed intellectually over the four year college experience. .And later when I went to graduate school my understanding took another leap forward.
My two daughters were luckier than I was and started college with an above average high school education, yet when I ask them if college changed them they said: "a lot".
One good test would be to see how many high school graduates can understand an abstract concept like existentialism. Very few I can assure you. I taught high school. But then see how many college students understand it. There will be many more.
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| Bryan Caplan: There are two ways to read this question. One is: "Who gets a good financial and/or personal return from college?" My answer: people in the top 25 percent of academic ability who also have the work ethic to actually finish college. The other way to read this is: "For whom is college attendance socially beneficial?" My answer: no more than 5 percent of high-school graduates, because college is mostly what economists call a "signaling game." Most college courses teach few useful job skills; their main function is to signal to employers that students are smart, hard-working, and conformist. The upshot: Going to college is a lot like standing up at a concert to see better. Selfishly speaking, it works, but from a social point of view, we shouldn't encourage it.
College attendance, in my view, is usually a drain on our economy and society. Encouraging talented people to spend many years in wasteful status contests deprives the economy of millions of man-years of output. If this were really an "investment," of course, it might be worth it. But I see little connection between the skills that students acquire in college and the skills they'll need later in life. |
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