I see that Megan McArdle is saying the same things about higher education that I’ve been saying for the last couple of decades (and on this blog for more than a decade):
It’s completely true that there is a big wage premium for having a college degree — but it does not therefore follow that we will make everyone better off by trying to shove every American through post-secondary (aka tertiary) education. We may simply be setting up college as a substitute for a high school diploma: a signal to employers that you can read and write, and are able to turn in scheduled assignments within a reasonable time frame. And in the process, excluding people who aren’t college-educated from access to decent jobs.
She also includes some unkind words about the tooth fairy.
The part of this discussion that baffles me is why is it an article of faith that every kid should be forced into higher education (whether by hard power or soft power)?
I think that the proponents of higher education for all really ought to dig into the numbers and not just the income differential between physicians and lawyers who graduate from elite law schools and the rest of us poor slobs.
Does she unnerstan’ the concept … of the Tooth Fairy?
“The part of this discussion that baffles me is why is it an article of faith that every kid should be forced into higher education”
Because for years this “worked” within reasonable tolerance. And momentum dies hard.
If it’s true that a college degree will increase a person’s lifetime earningns, we should give every kid a degree along with his birth certificate. What would be wrong is to pour more taxpayer dollars into the rathole of public education in Amerika.