Class and college in the NY Times

Of all the articles so far in the NY Times Class series, the article on college is the absolute worst. Just about everything here is wrong, or based on some liberal agenda not bound to reality.

The article has the basic supposition that college is Good, and if only everyone went to college then everyone would have nice middle class jobs with good salaries and all our country’s problems would go away.

This is patently false. College only benefits society as a whole to the extent that the economic productivity of the college attendee is increased by an amount greater than the cost of the education. No one has ever proved this to be the case for the vast majority of college students.

As I explained in my previous post, more about student loans and the value of a college education, statistics which show college graduates earn more, on average, than non-college graduates do not in any way demonstrate that college has a net economic benefit either for the graduate personally or for society as a whole.

It should be obvious that in a society where every single person had an additional four years of formal education beyond high school, there would still be a need for factory workers, retail store workers, and all the other lousy jobs that are now done primarily by non-college graduates. So such a society would simply have all these lousy jobs performed by people with four extra years of formal education and no one would be better off because of it.

In our society, most people who are intellectually capable of succeeding at college do in fact attend and graduate from college. For this we must thank the SAT, a test which the article wrongly mentioned in a negative light. (Liberals hate the SAT because liberals worship equality, and the SAT shows that we are not all intellectually equal.) No modern institution has done more for class mobility than the SAT. Thanks to the SAT, a student from an economically deprived background can demonstrate that he is intelligent enough to succeed in college. (I’ve previously expressed concerns that the new SAT is a step backwards in this regard.)

Comments

[Michael H.]

Hi Half Sigma
If it were the case that going to college allows one to gain valuable human capital skills (which is true in a profession like engineering or medicine) then if all people got those skills, the wages of low-skilled labor would have to rise. People would have the option of either working low-skilled jobs or high-skilled job and the wages of these jobs would have to move closer together.

You seem to be saying that college is basically a signal. If those who would ordinarily signal low ability by not going to college instead signal low ability by going to college and getting poor grades, then these people have accomplished absolutely nothing by going to college. Actually, the fellow in the NYT article who dropped out probably figured that out.

I think that a better education makes one a better citizen in general. People who are well-educated can make better decisions in voting. But I'm not sure people need to go to college for this.

[Half Sigma]

"You seem to be saying that college is basically a signal."

Yes, love the word "signal." Signaling is a very important aspect of human behavior.

[Steve]

But you might note that birth rates are declining in industrialized countries, and we are importing our cheap labor from abroad. One of the reasons birth rates are declining is that more people realize that they cannot afford to develop the human capital of multiple children. I think it is all for the good, because the cheap labor we are importing is very happy to work here, while many Americans are keen to provide a better life for their children.

I don't think the theme of this NYT piece is that "everyone should go to college" but rather how there are social forces that keep people from achieving and it has less to do with their ability than what part of town they were born in and what their parents do for a living. For instance, at my high school we were all told to consider community college because it would be "just as good" as a four year college.

Another issue to keep in mind is that more jobs require greater levels of education nowadays.

I'm not sure if liberals hate the SAT. I think they like it for the same reasons you do, but nowadays rich kids are adding alot of points to their SATs by taking prep classes. Meritocracy seems to work in the first round, but after that, elites learn how to game the system for their kids. Again, at my school, we were told not to bother studying for the SAT because it would "artificially" inflate our scores and we would be able to get admitted to schools that "we wouldn't do well at."

Great looking blog by-the-way!