(I’m Russian, and my experience with schools may be very different.)
Then why are they called “anti-schooling arguments” and not “arguments for big school reforms”? I think this is misleading.
Schools are not perfect? Yes, sure. Schools have trouble adapting to computer age? Yes, sure. Schools need to be reformed? Yes, sure! Schools are literally worse than no schools, all else equal? I think, no, they aren’t.
Then why are they called “anti-schooling arguments” and not “arguments for big school reforms”?...Schools are literally worse than no schools, all else equal? I think, no, they aren’t.
In the case of higher education, yes, they are literally worse than no schools, all else equal. If you burned all higher educational institutions to the ground, my prediction is that after a small transition period where people figured out how to get the 5% of actually economically productive information somewhere else, global GDP would significantly increase. A world where adults skip paying a hundred thousand dollars for 4-6 years of college, and learn how to perform their trade, for free, via a 1-2 year unpaid internship at an actual company, or at the equivalent of a bootcamp, is much better than the extraordinarily expensive and wasteful credentialing race we have now. I cannot understand why this is so controversial, and why people resist the vast empirical evidence supporting this take with such absurd intensity.
In the case of K12, I still call my position “anti-schooling”, because the vast majority of the stuff we coerce and threaten children into “studying” is useless. It happens that a couple of those things are really important, like literacy and numeracy, but since the important lessons represent less than 10% of what K12 does, and it’s accomplished in such a harmful way, I still call my position “anti-school”.
That doesn’t match reality at all. China had a massive program to send students for college education in the US. US college grads have very obviously wider knowledge and skill bases than their Chinese peers (probably because they were studying instead of drinking). Don’t get me wrong, there are absolutely firms that don’t pay a premium for “returners”, but they very much fall behind.
I’m sure that if keeping the same person around at the company doing the same job but with a bit more mentoring was more efficient than asking them to take a few years off to get a Master’s/PhD, more companies around here would do so.
China had a massive program to send students for college education in the US.
Governments make mostly incorrect decisions, both for reasons of misalignment and incompetence. They’re not hedge funds. Xi and Biden don’t get paid more if they hit good Gross Domestic Product targets.
I’m sure that if keeping the same person around at the company doing the same job but with a bit more mentoring was more efficient than asking them to take a few years off to get a Master’s/PhD, more companies around here would do so.
I’m unfamiliar with the business practice of letting employees “take a few years off” to get a Master’s/PhD; that might be a Chinese thing. Here employers will pay for employee’s higher education, but that’s generally pitched as part of the compensation package for working there and done for tax reasons, not upskilling. Employees go for higher education because of the signaling value of having more education, not because the knowledge will make them more valuable employees. No one would ever go to anything like a University if the University was unable to award degrees certifying that the person had done so. This is obvious.
There is no signaling reason if it’s your own employee. You already know the guy. You know him far more intimately than any degree.
I understand. My point is that if a person is going to get a Master’s degree anyways, it’s cheaper for the employer to compensate them by paying for their education than by actually paying them extra money, because the government will give them tax breaks for doing so. This is the real reason employers pay for employees’ education (besides a misguided sense of charity), not the other thing.
And people audit college courses all the time for upskilling. I’m considering doing so for grad courses right now.
Yet the vast majority don’t audit courses, even when it’s free. In the United States, you can walk into very respectable universities like UC Berkeley and sit in on any class you like. Even people who live next to the campus almost never do. Anomalous if you believe most of the value of education comes from imparting skills, obvious if you believe most of the value of UC Berkeley education is transacted via the degree that says “UC Berkeley grad” and not the information students study while attending.
(I’m Russian, and my experience with schools may be very different.)
Then why are they called “anti-schooling arguments” and not “arguments for big school reforms”? I think this is misleading.
Schools are not perfect? Yes, sure. Schools have trouble adapting to computer age? Yes, sure. Schools need to be reformed? Yes, sure! Schools are literally worse than no schools, all else equal? I think, no, they aren’t.
In the case of higher education, yes, they are literally worse than no schools, all else equal. If you burned all higher educational institutions to the ground, my prediction is that after a small transition period where people figured out how to get the 5% of actually economically productive information somewhere else, global GDP would significantly increase. A world where adults skip paying a hundred thousand dollars for 4-6 years of college, and learn how to perform their trade, for free, via a 1-2 year unpaid internship at an actual company, or at the equivalent of a bootcamp, is much better than the extraordinarily expensive and wasteful credentialing race we have now. I cannot understand why this is so controversial, and why people resist the vast empirical evidence supporting this take with such absurd intensity.
In the case of K12, I still call my position “anti-schooling”, because the vast majority of the stuff we coerce and threaten children into “studying” is useless. It happens that a couple of those things are really important, like literacy and numeracy, but since the important lessons represent less than 10% of what K12 does, and it’s accomplished in such a harmful way, I still call my position “anti-school”.
That doesn’t match reality at all. China had a massive program to send students for college education in the US. US college grads have very obviously wider knowledge and skill bases than their Chinese peers (probably because they were studying instead of drinking). Don’t get me wrong, there are absolutely firms that don’t pay a premium for “returners”, but they very much fall behind.
I’m sure that if keeping the same person around at the company doing the same job but with a bit more mentoring was more efficient than asking them to take a few years off to get a Master’s/PhD, more companies around here would do so.
Governments make mostly incorrect decisions, both for reasons of misalignment and incompetence. They’re not hedge funds. Xi and Biden don’t get paid more if they hit good Gross Domestic Product targets.
I’m unfamiliar with the business practice of letting employees “take a few years off” to get a Master’s/PhD; that might be a Chinese thing. Here employers will pay for employee’s higher education, but that’s generally pitched as part of the compensation package for working there and done for tax reasons, not upskilling. Employees go for higher education because of the signaling value of having more education, not because the knowledge will make them more valuable employees. No one would ever go to anything like a University if the University was unable to award degrees certifying that the person had done so. This is obvious.
There is no signaling reason if it’s your own employee. You already know the guy. You know him far more intimately than any degree.
And people audit college courses all the time for upskilling. I’m considering doing so for grad courses right now.
I understand. My point is that if a person is going to get a Master’s degree anyways, it’s cheaper for the employer to compensate them by paying for their education than by actually paying them extra money, because the government will give them tax breaks for doing so. This is the real reason employers pay for employees’ education (besides a misguided sense of charity), not the other thing.
Yet the vast majority don’t audit courses, even when it’s free. In the United States, you can walk into very respectable universities like UC Berkeley and sit in on any class you like. Even people who live next to the campus almost never do. Anomalous if you believe most of the value of education comes from imparting skills, obvious if you believe most of the value of UC Berkeley education is transacted via the degree that says “UC Berkeley grad” and not the information students study while attending.