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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (50174)

12/31/2017 11:57:46 AM

From: koan

Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 359794

I assume the quotes in your bio reflect your thinking, as it does mine. My point is the quotes you admire can only be achieved by long term study. High school is simply not enough, imo. But even more importantly is the fact, IMO, that their is never an optimum time when a person has enough education. It should be a life long endeavor. And to hit the critical mass whereby the mind learns "to think forever" takes at least four years of college.

That is not to say a person cannot do it on their own, but most people who can do that, go to college which is a much more comprehensive and efficient way to do it. We would be best off with free pre school for every child and free community and state colleges across the nation.

" "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." --Aristotle; Once you have been taught to think, it's hard to stop. --Petro Dobromylskyj, Hyperlipid

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And the paragraph below is down right nuts. Studies done on "Head Start show a 30 to 1 return in investment in terms of increased productivity and reduction in crime. Personally I think it is impossible for a society to spend more money on education than it will get back in terms of increased productivity and reduced crime based on the "development of the mind", which your author seems to have NO understanding of at all.

Bryon Caplan: "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.

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.