Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Bang for the Effort in Education

A Review of “The Case Against Education”


I think that I have a better way to put Bryan Caplan's hypothesis here it is:

  • My grandfather went to school for 1 years. He successfully ran a barber shop and speculated in real-estate (though he lost most of it in the great depression). He could read, write and do arithmetic, so it looks like the marginal value of an addition year of education falls off fast. 
  • Did you ever notice that people like Bernie Sanders seldom talk about ways of educating at lower cost?
  • Did you ever notice that we talk a lot about more about how to teach students more but little about what knowledge and skills will yield the most bang for the effort?
 From the review:

So what do we actually do in these courses? Push through hard problems, endure boredom, write, follow instructions, coordinate and communicate. Those are all job-relevant.

Would we learn those better another way like working or playing or while learning useful skills/knowledge? And BTW Bryan does address that saying you could learn that better working a job.

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