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Comment by bkohlmann | Hacker News Reader

To your first point, you may be interested to read Bryan Caplan’s “The Case Against Education.” He makes a very strong, quantitative case that education is primarily a signaling device.

For instance the difference between 3.5 years without graduating and 4 years + graduation is immense, whereas in a non-signaling model, they should have very similar outcomes.

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There is a huge selection bias in these groups. 3.5 years without graduating is likely to be students who are doing poorly since if you were a top tier student you aren't going to quit 0.5 years off from a degree under most circumstances. People quitting university after 3.5 years most often have a number of failed courses and aren't 0.5 years from a degree.

Another example then: college students forget a lot they learn inside of a few years. The only thing they hold for a significant amount of time is the prerequisite knowledge they needed to learn everything else they were taught. This applies especially to subjects largely unrelated to their degree / interests.

I think are two different stages we're conflating here.

Education, in the resume / HR sense is absolutely a signal.

Education, in maintaining and excelling in your profession is knowledge.

It's lamentable that degrees are used as filters, but I wouldn't trust someone to do an electrical engineering job who didn't have a related degree. There's simply too much to learn. (Yes, exceptions do exist, but they're not common)

I'd argue the more pointed questions to colleges should be: if you're not equipping your graduates with the latter knowledge, then what are they buying? And why should they continue to pay you?

Doesn't that book have a whole chapter espousing hyper-libertarian points about why child labour is good?

Depends on how you define children, how you define labor, and how you define good.

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