Reddit reviews The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money
We found 33 Reddit comments about The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
> have them do the work.
There is literally no more effective learning method than this.
Everything else is forgotten within 3 months. Look up knowledge retention rates for state-funded education.
It is horrible and utter waste of everyone's time and money.
I know people won't like to hear this. But this book basically shows that education is basically just signalling. The thing is though, that he also shows that people that have higher degrees (like Bachelor's or Master's) actually earn more money even if they are employed in fields like being a bartender or waiter funnily enough. I guess it is literally becoming true that you need a degree to help get these jobs (at least the higher end of these).
Everyone getting a Bachelors degree is basically just the same as everyone having a high school diploma. It is like standing up in a concert to see better, if you do it that is fine, but then if everyone does it we are all in the same position again.
https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691174652
Everything you're saying is old hat and naive. Edtech has been rehashed by everybody and their mother to death. The weak point is getting teachers on board, most of whom aren't the brightest among their college graduates. (On a side note, it doesn't take that much to get a 4-year degree, these days.) After that, it's getting the administrators, school district, parents, and community on board. And because education is intensely local, ie at the school district level, this has to happen everywhere. But this isn't going to happen, because education is about signaling, not achievement. Ironically, we still somehow manage to churn out 10 PhDs for every university professorship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEmuEWjHr5c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE1DuBesGYM
http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/09/04/acc-entry-does-the-education-system-adequately-serve-advanced-students/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/047059196X
http://www.cogtech.usc.edu/publications/kirschner_Sweller_Clark.pdf
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691174652
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Follow_Through_(project)
https://researched.org.uk/challenging-the-education-is-broken-and-silicon-valley-narratives/
Big discrepancy? I see a range from ~$50k in low cost-of-living states to ~$70k in high cost-of-living states. Seems like splitting hairs, considering that the value contributed to society by the typical teacher is less than zero.
http://amzn.com/0691174652
Here's another book by the co-author.
Look, you say in the comic that you guys disagree on some things, but seriously? This guy wants to privatize education and force plebs to take vocational education. He's a fucking libertarian corporate goon. I can't take anything he says seriously.
College is worth it(on average) for the individual but maybe not for the society as a whole. It may mostly be just signaling. An expensive IQ and marshmallow test.
https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691174652
It depends on how you consider the usefulness of credentials.
https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691174652 Caplan makes some very good points against that idea.
Additionally, higher education has a lot of rhetoric about producing rounded individuals, not experts. There's no reason to think that one couldn't focus on a subject on their own and gain some level of expertise.
It all comes down to how you define "expert."
Who do I believe?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691174652/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_LuuNBb6TVR56T
>That being said, there is value in being well rounded and not relying on spell check
Unfortunately, that is rarely the case. The amount of learned information that is retained is pretty dismal.
If education can't be useful, it should at least be inspiring. Public education is objectively neither.
Currently reading The Case Against Education, and it makes a compelling argument that roughly 80% of the secondary education system has to with social signaling effects rather than tangible self-improvement or skills.
My brother has been talking about this book to everyone who will listen, lately. If you haven't read it yet, I think you'd find it very interesting.
https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691174652
> but there really isn’t any school
The whole notion about institutionalizing gamdev education is absurd:
This goes for the entire educational system, except some niche professions like medical doctors and hands-on engineers.
If we were to reset civilization at our current level of technology, nobody would even entertain the thought of setting up education as forcing children to go into physical buildings to listen to someone talk for 45 minutes. Not to mention the unnatural, negative effect of the whole peer-prison feel to it.
Everyone should read this book.
I notice he didn't say anything about importance! I was hoping for a nod to Caplan.
I used to be an assistant professor before I quit and I'm deeply skeptical about the average value of a college education, especially compared to its price. There's ample empirical evidence for that position.
> This is just rank partisan propaganda. A living wage net benefits society by every available metric. It also has either a positive or neutral effect on unemployment levels, depending on area.
Please explain why a $100/hr minimum wage is a bad idea. Let's start there.
> Automation is coming anyway, and using that an an excuse for poverty wages is a Koch bothers special. Which is why your saying it. Automation is a separate issue from poverty wages.
Holy shit, wow. If I can pay a dude $8/hr to do a job for me, or a robot $12, I'll pay the dude. If the minimum wage ups to $15, I'll pay the robot. It is literally that simple.
> LOL, this is just false.
Baseload problem. Duck Curve. Look into it. California made too much solar and had to quit. Duck Curve. Base load. Technical issues.
> And yes, Nuclear is a great option, but it takes a long time to build, and is not the answer everywhere. Just some places. Again, it's context dependent
Yes, the context is base load. There are no kabillion joule batteries to stick excess power in. You have to meet the demand as it happens, and oversupply burns your grid out.
> Viewing the Trump tax cuts as anything other than a disaster is pure delusion. This an objective fact for everyone but the wealthiest Americans.
I want you to say the words: "doubling the standard deduction didn't help the poor." Say that phrase for me.
The Trump tax plan was a fiscal disaster because it's going to blow up the deficit and saddle future generations with insane debt. But it objectively helped the poor way more than pushing them out of a job with a $15 minimum wage would.
> No, it isn't, no, it isn't and no it isn't. You're wrong. And finding examples of dumb college credits/subject focus is not an argument.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-caplan-education-credentials-20180211-story.html
https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691174652/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1517610029&sr=1-1&refinements=p_27%3ABryan+Caplan
> The reality is, these programs are earned benefits,
Yes, and they are being pissed away three times faster than they should because our healthcare costs three times as much, because health providers are a nested onion of cartels, obstructionism, and graft. A PhD chemist could probably manufacture those Pharma Bro AIDS pills in his basement for a dollar a pill, but he's not allowed to. Who prevents him from doing it? Think long and hard about that question.
how do you feel about this bookthe case against it doesnt show more money helps
just read this article by an economics professor about education. thoughts?
the guy also wrote a book i'll be reading. is there a way to nominate it for the book club?
You might be interested in this book:
>Bryan Caplan argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students' skill but to certify their intelligence, work ethic, and conformity--in other words, to signal the qualities of a good employee.
>He advocates two major policy responses. The first is educational austerity. Government needs to sharply cut education funding to curb this wasteful rat race. The second is more vocational education, because practical skills are more socially valuable than teaching students how to outshine their peers.
There's a pretty good book that details a bunch of studies. https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691174652
> Even if you think that I was just duped by a system into getting a worthless degree and people shouldn't get worthless degrees, this system is still systematically duping millions of American teenagers year after year. If businesses need different skills, but aren't willing to train employees to do those jobs, colleges have to be restructured. There's no "market" forces to fix these problems.
Bryan Caplan who is professor of economics at George Mason University has a good book on this called The Case Against Education
Essentially, he argues that current higher education doesn't increase worker productivity. All the degree and education do is signal to employers that you can show up on time, follow orders, dress appropriately, turn in assignments on time, etc. Subsidizing education through government student loans, Pell grants, etc, only worsens the problem. In our current situation, if you don't have a B.S., many employers won't even look at your resume or even consider you as an intern. Essentially, these government subsidies are subsidizing the cost of companies looking for talent. Without subsidies, companies would have to consider resumes without a degree because it's likely the person is smart, capable, and productive but just doesn't have a degree.
Also, it's important to realize that increasing your productivity is the only way to earn more wealth through your work (and the wealth of society). If it is true that education doesn't (or hardly) increases productivity of those graduating, then -in addition to the above argument- it is doubly inefficient/bad to provide free higher education; as many left politicians are advocating.
If you are really interested in education, read books, you can start with this one:
https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11225.html
Also on amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691174652
You can also listen to an interview with him if you don't want to read:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hZylJp-pHo
Not everything can be measured. Statistics do not "say truth". They're a tool that can be used to support an argument. You can use statistics to "prove" something as ludicrous as WWII pulling the economy out of the Great Depression; doesn't mean that society benefited from removing all of its most skilled laborers from the workforce and from routing vast amounts of its valuable resources into the creation of bombs and tanks. Stop finding sources that confirm what you already believe and challenge what they taught you in public school.
https://fee.org/articles/the-history-and-results-of-our-disastrous-public-school-system-part-i/
https://fee.org/articles/the-history-and-results-of-our-disastrous-public-school-system-part-ii/
https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691174652
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40CGwaQX1sM
The reason why I noticed this is that Bryan Caplan recently published a book (which I didn't read, but which I read about quite a bit) making this signalling point: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691174652
achoo
Expect that the overwhelming evidence is that education does not make people smart.
Sorry for sort of grave-digging this thread, but does this mean that African population growth should be a concern for EA's? Do we have any good reasons to believe that donating money to charities that work in Africa might contribute to an increase in the population to unsustainable levels, which might cause famine and mass migration, especially combined with the effects of climate change?
Bill Gates seems to be worried about the possibility of the trend of reducing global poverty being reversed, which may lead to instability, and urges investment in the human capital (education and health) of young Africans. But, will education really be enough? I'm a bit skeptical of the human capital story after reading The Case Against Education.
So far the only discussion I've seen in the EA community is here, but that didn't really convince me either way.
Right now, I think that whatever good work is being done in Africa now, like Against Malaria, is well worth it, even considering the chance of a future famine, for a few reasons:
That being said, these are just some intuitions. I haven't thought deeply about the topic. /u/UmamiTofu, do you know if this sort of thing has been looked at before by people in the EA community?
>Denmark (where I live) through unions have negotiated a $22 minimum wage.
This isn't a government/state mandated minimum wage, it's also allegedly 110 DKK per hour (according to this article) - I guess the Danish public education system can't be that great in terms of math, since it appears that 110 DKK is only $16.76 instead of the $22 that you suggest it is.
>We are also paid to go to college
For a lot of people Tertiary education isn't a valuable thing to obtain. Bryan Caplan's The Case against Education is a good read to see how it's not beneficial - nor is state funding of it.
As for whether it's good at all, I'll let you Google the average income of an American and the average income of a Dane - I know which I'd rather be. While you're at it, be sure to look at migration rates from Denmark to the United States, as opposed to the other way around.
Finns förstås seriösa forskare som håller med: Caplan,
The Case Against Education
Och Caplans argument är IMNSHO bra mycket bättre än motståndarnas. Svårt att inte ge honom poäng efter den här tråden...
Education has become so available and loan money so free that anyone and everyone can go to college. Because of this, when workers want, say, a top 25% worker, that worker now has to have so much more education to signal their intelligence, hard-workerness, and ability to get along with others. Before money was free, employers had no basis to demand a better-educated worker, but now they can. The fact is that employers don't actually expect you to have learned marketable job skills...waiters who earned a 4 year degree in archaeology still make more than those who didn't. Employers are paying for the signalling value that a 4 year degree suggests.
Learn more about signalling in education in this fantastic and mind-blowing book:
https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691174652/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1541368181&sr=8-1&keywords=the+case+against+education
They should just read Bryan Caplan.
https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691174652
IQ test + 360 degree personality test = sufficient signal for employers to make hiring decisions?
Do we really need to put children n adolescents through 12 years of pressure and torture to get that signal?
Edit: Here's a nice summary of Caplan's book. A lot of it should resonate with anybody involved in our education system.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/whats-college-good-for/546590/
Which is why everyone needs to read this book
https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691174652