I’m glad to see that Dan Drezner has grasped at least part of the reality. In his tentative defense of universities in his Washington Post op-ed, “Four tough things columnists should do before writing about universities”, one of the “tough things” he lists is this:
4) Be honest that you’re using higher ed reform as an implicit industrial policy. An implicit theme of Pearlstein’s essay is that too much money is being thrown at the humanities and not enough at the STEM fields [UPDATE: This morning Pearlstein called me directly to state that he does not in fact believe this. The hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts apologizes if this inference was made in error]. This theme is hardly unique to him. President Obama has scorned art history majors in the past and GOP presidential candidates have been bashing philosophers in the present.
Over the period of the last twenty-five years the closest thing the U. S. has had to to an industrial policy has been educational policy and it has enjoyed bipartisan support. Defenders of the policy always point to aggregate numbers as proof but fail to realize the degree to which a handful of high-earning majors (some of which are only offered in a handful of schools) skew the results. Let alone the degree to which the incomes of a frighteningly small number of individuals skews the results. Mark Zuckerberg does not prove that the key to a bright economic future for the United States is higher education. Let alone Bill Gates. Gadzooks, both men are doing their darnedest to ensure that’s not the case.
What they do prove is that there are some people who will become wealthy whether they attend college or not. Now there’s an industrial policy for you.
The observation on Gates and Zuckerberg is of course correct. But I wouldn’t take it to the extreme of concluding that education does not correlate with income. I don’t know too many tradesmen who live in my neighborhood.
When I was a “lowly engineer,” and had I stayed in the field, (not moved into management) I honestly don’t know what I’d be making. $100K?? $150K?? $200K?? I really don’t know. But it would be north of income norms by more than a standard deviation. As fate had it, mine is a totally different world, and what I assume you are referring to is high earning degrees by a few schools. But engineering would have been quite comfortable.
If we apply the “kid test” for parental aspirations, I can tell you we are encouraging our daughter to go to a frighteningly admissions-difficult school for a frighteningly selective degree………and not poly sci or straight off to electricians school.