Also, so far at least, ed-tech isn’t looking too promising. Education can probably be improved with free online resources and maybe AI, but results have been disappointing thus far.
The larger issue is that instead of being a force for greater economic productivity and the creator of the public good of an educated citizenry, higher education in rich countries is largely a wasteful zero-sum competition for credentials. I recommend Bryan Caplan’s book The Case Against Education on this topic (and Zvi’s LW post on the book ). Improving education will therefore depend on changing credentialing.
The problem is that access to information/educational resources is almost never the problem. In poor countries, the best interventions to improve educational attainments are often health interventions. In rich countries, education isn’t neglected, and it seems extremely hard to make real progress. Bill Gates recently spent almost a $1B to improve educational attainment in the US, with nothing to show for it.
Also, so far at least, ed-tech isn’t looking too promising. Education can probably be improved with free online resources and maybe AI, but results have been disappointing thus far.
The larger issue is that instead of being a force for greater economic productivity and the creator of the public good of an educated citizenry, higher education in rich countries is largely a wasteful zero-sum competition for credentials. I recommend Bryan Caplan’s book The Case Against Education on this topic (and Zvi’s LW post on the book ). Improving education will therefore depend on changing credentialing.
For an analysis of the link between growth and education, I would recommend this post: Educational Romanticism & Economic Development .
I would also be very skeptical of claims that education causes prosocial behavior rather than just being correlated with it.
From an EA perspective, the current consensus is that education is not an effective cause area (unless “you are particularly well-suited to working in this field (e.g. you have lots of relevant knowledge or think you’d be a fantastic teacher), and you plan to do something innovative” ). See 5 reasons not to go into education and Schools Are Not the Key.
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