It is extremely common for university students to become “artisans” in the sense that seems relevant here. (That is: people doing a skilled job that it is possible to do well or badly and in which it is possible to do better by trying harder.) And it is extremely common for university students to intend to become “artisans” in the same sense.
Maybe Caplan is right that in fact it turns out that university education is, on balance, not helpful to people in doing their jobs. That can hardly be relevant to Lewis and his audience, back in 1944, decades before Bryan Caplan was even born.
I’d expect it to be significantly more applicable to the kinds of students Lewis was speaking to, than the average college student now, because college used to be more of an extreme elite endeavor, and fewer jobs used to require a nonspecific college degree. And in fact the aggregate behavior of university graduates between Lewis’s time and now caused us to live in a more credentialist society, with weaker property rights, where normal college students feel like they don’t have freedom of speech because it’s so important to be liked, and a large share of “business” is governed by the culture of Moral Mazes.
So you’re suggesting that the typical university student at a goodish UK university in 1944 would, after graduating, not be in the sort of job that involves skill and that it’s possible to do better or worse?
I am not in possession of the sort of statistics that might enable us to decide that question, but I have to say that that seems awfully improbable to me.
When Lewis gives a short list of possible post-university destinations it goes like this: ” …in whatever hospital, inn of court, diocese, school, business, or college you arrive after going down …”. So he’s thinking of doctors, lawyers, clergy, teachers, people-working-for-businesses, and universities. Obviously that second-last category is a large and varied one. Anyway: clearly medicine is a skilled profession in which one can learn and exercise greater or lesser skill. So is law. One could argue about the clergy, but I’m pretty sure Lewis felt that it was such a profession. I think it’s clear that education is such a profession, though maybe Caplan would disagree. Businesses, as I say, are many and varied, but at any rate the ones I’ve worked in have contained a lot of people doing difficult work that could be done well or badly. University education: same remarks apply as “lower” education.
Make of all that what you will. At any rate, it seems that the internal evidence of Lewis’s address suggests an audience to whom his advice is not in fact inapplicable. (So does the observation that Lewis was not an idiot.)
It is not clear to me how the allegedly-lamentable-in-consequences behaviour of university graduates between Lewis’s time and now is relevant. Are you saying that the bad state of society now proves that university graduates in 1944 did not work in jobs where one could do a difficult job well or badly? Surely not, but then what point are you making there?
I’d expect it to be significantly more applicable to the kinds of students Lewis was speaking to, than the average college student now, because college used to be more of an extreme elite endeavor, and fewer jobs used to require a nonspecific college degree. And in fact the aggregate behavior of university graduates between Lewis’s time and now caused us to live in a more credentialist society, with weaker property rights, where normal college students feel like they don’t have freedom of speech because it’s so important to be liked, and a large share of “business” is governed by the culture of Moral Mazes.
So you’re suggesting that the typical university student at a goodish UK university in 1944 would, after graduating, not be in the sort of job that involves skill and that it’s possible to do better or worse?
I am not in possession of the sort of statistics that might enable us to decide that question, but I have to say that that seems awfully improbable to me.
When Lewis gives a short list of possible post-university destinations it goes like this: ” …in whatever hospital, inn of court, diocese, school, business, or college you arrive after going down …”. So he’s thinking of doctors, lawyers, clergy, teachers, people-working-for-businesses, and universities. Obviously that second-last category is a large and varied one. Anyway: clearly medicine is a skilled profession in which one can learn and exercise greater or lesser skill. So is law. One could argue about the clergy, but I’m pretty sure Lewis felt that it was such a profession. I think it’s clear that education is such a profession, though maybe Caplan would disagree. Businesses, as I say, are many and varied, but at any rate the ones I’ve worked in have contained a lot of people doing difficult work that could be done well or badly. University education: same remarks apply as “lower” education.
Make of all that what you will. At any rate, it seems that the internal evidence of Lewis’s address suggests an audience to whom his advice is not in fact inapplicable. (So does the observation that Lewis was not an idiot.)
It is not clear to me how the allegedly-lamentable-in-consequences behaviour of university graduates between Lewis’s time and now is relevant. Are you saying that the bad state of society now proves that university graduates in 1944 did not work in jobs where one could do a difficult job well or badly? Surely not, but then what point are you making there?