“The world Might Be Better Off Without College for Everyone” — Reviewing Bryan Caplan’s Thesis
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In an article in the Atlantic, Bryan Caplan, an economist at George Mason University and author of ‘What is College good for?’ argues that college outside of specific technical domains such as Engineering, is a waste of time and money.
The title is likely to inflame those of a liberal mindset, indeed Audrey Watters a prominent Edtech blogger saw fit to dismiss it noting “This is what Koch money buys you”. Watters is referring to recent scholarship demonstrating strong links between George Mason University and the Koch Brothers — Conservative billionaires who extensively fund Republican candidates and causes across the country. In particular, they have heavily funded the Economics department of George Mason University to generate libertarian policy papers that just so happen to favour the Koch brothers’ commercial interest. There is certainly substance to those allegations but Caplan’s book has won wider plaudits and some of his points are merit discussion.
Caplan’s central thesis is that while College delivers extrinsic value (monetary gain through higher salary) it overwhelmingly fails to deliver intrinsic value — improved intelligence that leads to improved job performance. Caplan cites studies which show negligible difference between first year and final students in reasoning and literacy as well as studies showing college students forget virtually all their knowledge soon after graduation. Furthermore he cites evidence showing the number of hours devoted to studying dropping since the 1950s to around ~15 hours per week. According to Caplan, only subjects that are directly applicable to the subsequent job e.g. Engineers can justify college.
For Caplan, College is an elaborate (and extremely costly) exercise in signalling, that is, demonstrating to employers that you have certain traits that others don’t have, so its less that you are smarter for having gone to college but rather you got into college because you were smarter. This argument has a long history (mostly on the economic right), starting with Milton Friedman but has been built on by the likes of Joseph Stiglitz.
In lieu of College for all, Caplan proposes a huge expansion of vocational education in the manner of Germany that would build the directly applicable technical skills that US employers need rather than having to adapt a College major to work that the graduate who ends up taking on such a job will probably leave soon after anyway.
Is he right? Caplan’s support of vocational education is to some extent supported by both sides of the political spectrum. Anthony Carnevale, Director of the Georgetown Centre on Work and Education and who served both Clinton and George W Bush administration on skills, interviewed with the Atlantic. Carnevale argues that the US does suffer from a lack of a vocational base which has undermined blue collar job security (both from job outsourcing and latterly automation). However he notes there are three significant obstacles to implementing it; firstly, vocational rather than college education carries a lot of stigma (parents think their child would be doomed to a low paying job), secondly vocational is expensive ($60–260k) and most companies can’t afford it and thirdly, companies don’t want to invest in an employee who might then leave them for a competitors (moral hazard of training).
These aren’t insurmountable problems — the UK apprenticeship scheme works by taxing all companies above a certain payroll size and then companies can apply for that money back as a voucher — that removes the moral hazard and to some extent the cost problem. It doesn’t solve the perception problem which is thornier. Technical education has a much better reputation in countries like Germany because strong unions have ensured relatively good wages and working conditions; there is some truth to the fact blue collar jobs don’t pay well and furthermore are the most vulnerable to automation. Such problems alone ought warrant considerable scepticism of Caplan’s proposals — it would be a huge risk to undercut college without providing a well-funded and proven alternative educational system. But more problematically, is his central thesis on the uselessness of college even correct?
Not according to the US Academy of Arts and Sciences. They argue that College is more important than ever and that the system needs further investment. The council’s latest report argues for more funding to be linked to completion (forcing colleges to help support students) and for the better deployment of technology such as predictive analytics to raise completion rates. They argue, more holistically than Caplan, that liberal arts vs STEM is a false dichotomy and both are required to provide resilient employees (i.e. specific skills to enter work and general skills to allow reskilling, collaboration etc). Investment applied strategically can raise completion and pay for itself in renewed economic productivity and civic engagement.
Game, set and match? Not quite. Implicit in the Academy’s report is that investment is only justified if it’s spent directly on teaching and student outcomes. US Higher Education is a $500bn a year industry, far higher per capita than comparable countries like the UK. Caplan is more correct when viewing it from this point of view (i.e. US Higher Education delivers mediocre outcomes given its cost) and he’s not wrong to note it often does under-serve those who still end up in low-paying jobs, only with college debt to boot.
One solution to improving College and increasing Vocational education might be on a per state basis. Indiana and California have both proposed different ways of supplying the workers that local employers need and state-level solutions tend to have less political opposition than federal ones. That at least provides a laboratory of ideas for which other states could copy without it escalating into the culture wars that Higher Education is increasingly becoming in the US under Trump — here, here and here
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