Jonah Lehrer writes:
If nothing is learned, why are students and parents so desperate to get into the best schools? Bryan Caplan, an economist at George Mason University and author of the forthcoming book “The Case Against Education,” argues that colleges are more about certifying their students than actually teaching them useful skills. Their primary function is to provide “signals” of intelligence and competency, which is why they put students through a variety of mostly arbitrary and useless academic hoops. “Good students tend to be smart, hardworking and conformist—three crucial traits for almost any job,” writes Dr. Caplan. “When a student excels in school, then, employers correctly infer that he’s likely to be a good worker.”
This is discouraging and challenging. I will likely not have the money to send my children to my alma mater or another suitable school, and I have begun to fear that it would a waste of money to do so. I loved my college experience, but I don’t know that I can offer a similar one to my children.
I’m pretty sure we’ll develop more efficient signaling mechanisms.
I’ve been on both sides of this issue. I dropped out of a junior college business program in my early 20’s when I got the job I thought I was going to school to get. I managed a number of small businesses over the next 15 years with experience in retail, wholesale, marketing and distribution. Yet, even with that experience under my belt, I couldn’t get my foot in the door of any company with over 30 employees because I didn’t have a degree. So I went back to school in my late 30’s and earned my bachelor of science at age 40. Then I went on to Seminary and earned an Master of Divinity at age 44.
In seminary, I had to constantly remind myself that I was there for the credentialing. There were many topics I would have loved to study more in depth, but with 16 grad school credits spread out over 8 classes every semester, if I were to take any extra time on one class, three others would end up with incompletes. There were just too many subjects that needed to be covered to spend much time on any of them. So I had to make myself into a conformist if I expected to pass. Failure in one area to excel in another meant failure of the whole undertaking. With that in mind, I learned to figure out the professor’s expectations, do what it took to meet them and get on to the next class.
The whole idea of education as something separated from normal life strikes me as unreasonable. I got a B.A. and an M.Ed. from a correspondence school, while working.
Greybeard, I assume you learned the material you felt called to study in greater depth after you became a minister?
The chair of the Department of Education at my college asked me to consider (meaning, he did not tell me what the truth was) that pursing an education at a dedicated campus during a time you are not working would allow you to focus your attention more on your studies than if you had to work or do other things we’d call normal living. I think he has a good point. I was a fair student, but I wish I had learned more.
To a small extent I have been able to pursue a broad reading of favorite subjects. On occasion a topic of special interest will coincide with a sermon or sermon series allowing for more time to be spent. But for the most part, the stuff that drew me away at the time never regained enough significance for me to go back. Some of the questions were later answered by related study in other classes. Some was revealed for the insignificant distraction that it was. As Solomon said, “Of the writing of books there will be no end.” The flip side of that is that of the reading of books there will be no end either. It also means that you can’t learn it all all at once. One of my undergraduate professors who taught computer network administration recommended learning by the ditch method. That meant that every time you come by a topic you dig out another shovelful. Over time, those shovelfuls add up to a completed ditch dug from here to there.