Ending Education Subsidies

Re: Con’s ContentionsHis statistics about college graduates earning more are begging the question. I agree that college graduates earn more than non-graduates. The question is why—simply stating that they do earn more proves nothing.Con then argues that many people would not be able to go to college without subsidies. I agree. My whole argument is that there should be less college education, because it costs a lot (both directly, and in the form of the opportunity cost of not working during that time) and usually doesn’t increase productivity.C1: Human Capital Con misunderstands my studies. Perhaps my algebra and calculus examples weren’t clear. My point is that the only reason algebra helps with calculus is that its part of calculus—you need to know how to do algebra to do calculus. And calculus doesn’t help with anything that doesn’t explicitly involve calculus. Con claims that he isn’t arguing for general transfer of learning, and therefore my arguments don’t apply. But by ‘general transfer’, I don’t mean general education requirements. I mean anything that isn’t actually part of your job. Not related to your job, like how the study of human societies in sociology class might be sort of related to social work or teaching, but actually part of your job. Like, learning how to use Excel will make you more productive if your job requires using Excel. Taking classes provides students with a specific set of knowledge, and unless you use that knowledge in your job, it doesn’t make you more productive. Transfer of learning studies failing to find evidence of general transfer of learning doesn’t just mean that classes completely unrelated to your job are useless; it means that classes that aren’t pretty much exactly the same thing as your job are useless.In the experiments I’m citing, educational psychologists tried very hard to find general transfer of learning. They made the sets of problems as similar as possible to each other to make it easier for students to transfer their knowledge from one to the other. The problems in the study I mentioned last round are very similar—if people can apply their learning to different situations, then surely they’d be able to apply it to different problems as similar as estimating the area of a square and estimating the area of a triangle. But they didn’t. Even extraordinarily similar problems found no evidence of transfer—in a 1974 study, they trained students to do a word problem involving cannibals and missionaries. They then tested to see if that training transferred over to the exact same problem with the words ‘cannibals’ and ‘missionaries’ replaced with ‘jealous husbands’ and ‘wives’. They found no evidence of transfer—even though the subjects were not the average person, but college students! [1] The literature on Transfer of Learning theory shows that the only way to get better at X is to practice doing X. People can succeed in college classes because you’re tested on exactly what you studied for—but work in the real world is rarely exactly what you studied in college, so college classes usually won't make you more productive at work.C2: SignallingI don’t think I need any evidence to show that people that go to college are smarter and harder working than those that don’t—it’s self-evident to anyone who’s ever been to high school, and observed the differences between college-bound students and non-college-bound students firsthand. Think about what gets you into college—good test scores and grades. Are people with good test scores and grades just as smart and hard working as those without them? And, of course, people who go to college and graduate and probably smarter/harder-working than those that go to college but drop out. Anyway, even though I don’t think I should need it, I do have evidence. The average IQ for college graduates is 115—that is, the average college graduate is smarter than 5/6 of the population. [2] In addition, going to college shows conscientiousness—that is, being goal-oriented and forward looking (being low on conscientiousness means being more laid-back, present-oriented, and impulsive). Going to college for 4 years before getting the reward shows that someone is goal-oriented and forward looking. This is an important trait for employers—conscientious employees are more reliable, more motivated, harder working, and have lower rates of absenteeism. [3]Con argues that college causes students to be smarter and harder-working, which completely contradicts his earlier claim that he wasn’t arguing that general transfer of learning exists. College classes making someone smarter in general would be general transfer of learning. College may improve work ethic more than sitting around doing nothing, but it certainly doesn’t improve work ethic compared to actually having a job. Think about it—would you want to hire someone with a college degree that had never held a job? The average full-time college student puts in only 14 hours of studying per week—compared to 24 in 1961. [4] Hardly a way to build one’s work ethic. Coincidentally, the average return to education has sharply increased during that time—the opposite of what the human capital model would predict.C3: Useful EducationMy argument is that only education involving specific job training, like medical schools, significantly increases productivity. For other degrees, like sociology, the investment is not worth the cost. If someone won’t make enough to pay back an unsubsidized loan, then that just proves that that money would be better invested elsewhere. Saying that you need a subsidy for an investment to be profitable is admitting that the investment is a waste of money.[1] Reed, S.K., Earns, G.W., & Banerji, R. (1974). The role of analogy in transfer between similar problem states. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 436-450.[2] http://www.assessmentpsychology.com...[3] Roberts, B.W.; Jackson, J.J.; Fayard, J.V.; Edmonds, G. & Meints, J (2009). "Chapter 25. Conscientiousness". In Mark R. Leary, & Rick H. Hoyle. Handbook of Individual Differences in Social Behavior. New York/London: The Guildford Press. pp. 257-273.[4] http://www.aei.org...