The Case Against Education

Posted on 02 May 2018 by Bryan Caplan

Despite being immensely popular and immensely lucrative education is grossly overrated In this explosive book, Bryan Caplan argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students skill but to certify their intelligence, work ethic, and conformity in other words, to signal the qualities of a good employee Learn why students hunt for easy As and casually forget most of what they learn after the final exam, why decades of growing access to education have not resulted in better jobs for the average worker but instead in runaway credential inflation, how employers reward workers for costly schooling they rarely if ever use, and why cutting education spending is the best remedy.Caplan draws on the latest social science to show how the labor market values grades over knowledge, and why the education your rivals have, the you need to impress employers He explains why graduation is our society s top conformity signal, and why even the most useless degrees can certify employability He advocates two major policy responses The first is educational austerity Government needs to sharply cut education funding to curb this wasteful rat race The second is vocational education, because practical skills are socially valuable than teaching students how to outshine their peers.Romantic notions about education being good for the soul must yield to careful research and common sense The Case against Education points the way. Best Read The Case Against Education [ By ] Bryan Caplan [ Kindle ePUB or eBook ] – kino-fada.fr I consider it important to read genuine works of scholarship that present an opinion or position that is diametrically opposed to my own, especially as pertains to my profession in collegiate level education Thus reading a book called, The Case Against Education, is an important activity in that it potentially will reveal facts and opinions that might not be comfortable to come to terms with but are neve...Bryan Caplan s new book has provoked a storm of criticism, from both laypeople and fellow economists Fortunately, Caplan has taken the time to rebut his opponents, point by point He put these rebuttals into a book called The Case Against Education, and I recommend his critics read it.Before I get going, I should admit that I m biased I m a college dropout who has a white collar job If everyone thought like Caplan did, I would make a lotmoney On the other hand, it s not like this bias Bryan Caplan s new book has provoked a storm of criticism, from both laypeople and fellow economists Fortunately, Caplan has taken the time to rebut his opponents, point by point He put these rebuttals into a book called The Case Against Education, and I recommend his critics read it.Before I get going, I should admit that I m biased I m a college dropout who has a white collar job If everyone thought like Caplan did, I would make a lotmoney On the other hand, it s not like this bias affects anything important of all the ways I could spend time trying to get a raise, arranging a wholesale shift in our culture is not at the top of the list Also, Caplan has a stronger bias in the opposite direction he s a tenured professor If everyone read his book and took it seriously, he d lose his dream job.So motivations won t help you figure out who to believe You ll have to figure out what s right, instead.Fortunately, Caplan makes that pretty easy The book basically makes the case that 1 Edu...Half way through this book I thought ok I m convinced, no need to go on about it By the time I finished it I felt as though every opinion I had on education had been reshaped.For instance, the other day I watched a YouTube video discussing how to use gamification to increase engagement in schools and help kids learn easily This would have seemed like a great policy with no downsides to me before, but now seems like a way to dramatically increase the amount of learning and work kids Half way through this book I thought ok I m convinced, no need to go on about it By the time I finished it I felt as though every opinion I had on education had been reshaped.For instance, the other day I watched a YouTube video discussing how to use gamification to increase engagement in schools and he...Bryan Caplan s new book is a devastating and depressing take down of the education system Caplan argues that the education system does little to educate and that most of the gains we see from education are not linked to what students may learn If he s right, then most of the current education system K 12, higher ed is a colossal waste There are, nevertheless, important liberating elements at least for me as a higher ed teacher There is a lot Caplan covers, and I won t touch on most of it Bryan Caplan s new book is a devastating and depressing take down of the education system Caplan argues that the education system does little to educate and that most of the gains we see from education are not linked to what students may learn If he s right, then most of the current education system K 12, higher ed is a colossal waste There are, nevertheless, important liberating elements at least for me as a higher ed teacher There is a lot Caplan covers, and I won t touch on most of it here I m going to focus on a few key things that struck me as the most important and interesting Agree with his conclusions or not, Caplan presents us with an important argument about education with which we need to d...I read it so you don t have to Some useful information for the current debate topic, but it was hard to take this libertarian screed against education too seriously And that was before I got to the chapter that calls for relaxed regulations on child labor.3.5 stars Tough book to rate I really enjoyed reading the book Kaplan is a very earnest writer and the book was a lot of fun to read The book was well researched, and when he was guessing or making conjectures, he was very upfront about that However, I really just could not agree with most of his findings I think that liberal arts education does ha...Interesting Quotes Learning doesn t have to be useful Learning doesn t have to be inspiring When learning is neither useful nor inspirational, though, how can we call it anything but wasteful Bryan Caplan, the Case Against Education Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money Popular support for education subsidies rests on the fallacy of composition The person who getseducation, gets a better job It works you see it plainly Yet it does not follow that if e Interesting Quotes Learning doesn t have to be useful Learning do...Caplan makes an excellent case against the Education Government Complex on multiple grounds that the value of education is primarily 80% signaling vs skill, that the skills taught are largely irrelevant to most students, that students don t get much skill or viewpoint change from their time in education, andIn general I agree with him, although I do think he undervalues a class of quantitative, mathematical, scientific, and analytics skills to a large number of workers things which Caplan makes an excellent case against the Education Government Complex on multiple grounds that the value of education is primarily 80% signaling vs skill, that the skills taught are largely irrelevant to most students, that students don t get much skill or viewpoint change from their time in education, andIn general I agree with him, although I do think he underval...Terrible I agree with the author that much of what passes for education today is in fact a complete waste of individual time and a misallocation of societal resources The case needs to be made But this bo...The author makes some really strong points, with the necessary backup stats This book, though dry at times, is a must read for everyone interested in education, or going through education.Though I may not agree with all the points, the book is a really informative read by an author who has done...

English
02 May 2018

Bryan Caplan