interesting read with lots of nice stats. overall i disagree with his thesis. im with the non economic niggas. edumacation for all.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/whats-college-good-for/546590/
“The labor market doesn’t pay you for the useless subjects you master; it pays you for the preexisting traits you signal by mastering them.”
“The main effect is not better jobs or greater skill levels, but a credentialist arms race.”
“Most of the salary payoff for college comes from crossing the graduation finish line… Unless colleges delay job training until the very end, signaling is practically the only explanation.”
“But when we measure what the average college graduate recalls years later, the results are discouraging, to say the least.”
“Educational psychologists have discovered that much of our knowledge is “inert.” Students who excel on exams frequently fail to apply their knowledge to the real world.”
"Non-economists—also known as normal human beings—lean holistic: We can’t measure education’s social benefits solely with test scores or salary premiums. Instead we must ask ourselves what kind of society we want to live in—an educated one or an ignorant one? "
“Fifty years ago, college was a full-time job. The typical student spent 40 hours a week in class or studying. Effort has since collapsed across the board. “Full time” college students now average 27 hours of academic work a week—including just 14 hours spent studying.”
“What are students doing with their extra free time? Having fun. As Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa frostily remark in their 2011 book, Academically Adrift,”
“Arum and Roksa cite a study finding that students at one typical college spent 13 hours a week studying, 12 hours “socializing with friends,” 11 hours “using computers for fun,” eight hours working for pay, six hours watching TV, six hours exercising, five hours on “hobbies,” and three hours on “other forms of entertainment.” Grade inflation completes the idyllic package by shielding students from negative feedback. The average GPA is now 3.2.”
“Studying irrelevancies for the next four years will impress future employers and raise her income potential. If she tried to leap straight into her first white-collar job, insisting, “I have the right stuff to graduate, I just choose not to,” employers wouldn’t believe her. To unilaterally curtail your education is to relegate yourself to a lower-quality pool of workers. For the individual, college pays.”
“This does not mean, however, that higher education paves the way to general prosperity or social justice. When we look at countries around the world, a year of education appears to raise an individual’s income by 8 to 11 percent. By contrast, increasing education across a country’s population by an average of one year per person raises the national income by only 1 to 3 percent. In other words, education enriches individuals much more than it enriches nations.”
“My thesis, in a single sentence: Civilized societies revolve around education now, but there is a better—indeed, more civilized—way. If everyone had a college degree, the result would be not great jobs for all, but runaway credential inflation. Trying to spread success with education spreads education but not success.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYx7YG0RsFY
That party last night Was awfully crazy, I wish we taped itI danced my ass off And had this one girl completely nakedDrink my drink and smoke my weed But my good friends is all I needPass out at three, wake up at ten Go out to eat, then do it again Man, I love college