The Case Against Education

I have always felt a bit strange about education and it seems like most people do too. After being educated for 18 years you begin to question whether it was all useful or what the purpose of all of it is. Education is a necessity to put us in good stead for the rest of our lives but does education even do this? In the early stages of education, we do learn vital skills like reading, writing and arithmetic, but what is built upon these foundations becomes questionable. Barely any life skills are taught, and I found myself figuring out how to pay my taxes and applying for jobs on my own or with the help of the people around me. I find it strange that none of these skills is taught in high school or university unless it’s part of your degree. The workforce and jobs available are changing so quickly, but the education system hasn’t changed for decades. This seems strange to me and maybe a revamp of the school system, primary, secondary and tertiary may improve society as a whole.

The sad but obvious truth is that education is mainly signalling, and employers don’t care much about what we learn, but rather that we’re good obedient workers willing to commit 3 or 4 years of our adult lives to get a job. Knowing this, students get their degrees for the sake of it, out of necessity to get an interview. This creates a lack of enthusiasm for learning and defeats the purpose. These are the ideas of Bryan Caplan in his book The Case Against Education -why the education system is a waste of time and money. Bryan Caplan is an economics professor at George Mason University and has been in education his whole life. From when he started kindergarten until now, still at a university, he has been questioning the means and methods of education. That’s what makes this book so interesting, he has written it as someone presenting their thesis. It is filled with references to studies that back up his claims and personal accounts of his experiences educating university students. He goes into detail discussing the rate of return for investing in each level of education, meaning high school, university, masters and doctorate. Looking at this data can shed light on whether you should continue your studies or get a job.   

The main conclusion that he comes to, is that education is about 80% signalling and 20% human capital. Up until we graduate, we would have spent most of our lives in education and we come out the other side with minimal actual improvement. Some may argue that signalling doesn’t exist, but Caplan has a great example that shows just how much our society values signalling. The dependence on signalling is known as the Sheepskin effect because degrees used to be printed on sheepskin parchment. The idea is that you can receive the best education in the world for free, but that doesn’t matter. You can attend any Princeton classes you want and basically go to every lecture for any degree, but you won’t receive the diploma at the end. If we really valued education for the sake of it then the degree wouldn’t matter as much, but it does. This is the same for high school, if you were to drop out a day before graduation you would be seen as someone who doesn’t finish things and it’s even seen as a counter signal. You have the exact same amount of education, but you don’t have the certificate to prove it and that matters. That’s why dropping out is risky, but people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were confident enough in their ideas and abilities that their livelihoods would never be in the hands of someone else.  

Another interesting point Caplan discusses is the stagnation and lack of useful skills taught in primary and secondary school. A prerequisite for most schools is that students must learn a second language, and these are usually taught half-heartedly. The retention of languages taught in high schools is poor at best and nothing has been done about it. There are many ways to change the syllabus to help improve students learning, but very few have been applied. We could even ask the question of whether learning a second language is necessary given the way students approach it now. Why not include computer programming in choices for a second language? Being able to code is becoming more and more important and this seems like a greatly beneficial change that could set up many children for the future.

Online education has made very promising progress and its growth accelerated during Covid. Many prestigious schools had to go online for 2020 classes and their attempts were laughable. More students were falling asleep than before, and interactive resources were hard to come by. The online education sector has been doing this for a while and so it wasn’t even a competition. You could learn the same subject on an online learning platform for a fraction of the price, with great interactivity and tools tailored to online learning at your disposal. There is just one problem. The diploma at the end. These online schools give you a diploma ‘equivalent’ to any prestigious school, but the employers don’t see it that way. A whole lot of stigmas come with an online degree which could affect your work prospects. This is the sad truth, but it is slowly changing. Caplan doesn’t believe that online education will surpass brick-and-mortar schools based on the current systems in place. I hope they gain more esteem because this will give people a greater chance at changing their current circumstances.

If you’re even a bit curious about the return-on-investment education brings for any level of student or the problems that excessive government spending on education brings, then give this book a read. It is quite dense, and I struggled to get through the first few chapters discussing all the statistics and studies. But the points he makes are valid and I’m curious about what other people’s opinions are on the topic. It makes you think about who’s really benefiting from our current education system and if the main goal is to educate, then a few things could be done differently.