tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post2850758321548555663..comments2024-03-28T17:44:11.289+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: What benefit from the trebling of university graduates in one generation?Bruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-43638704012049817682010-07-26T09:03:02.424+01:002010-07-26T09:03:02.424+01:00It is about time we went back to the drawing board...It is about time we went back to the drawing board on education I think.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-72638198000886558922010-07-24T13:50:58.546+01:002010-07-24T13:50:58.546+01:00In the US the 'lack of benefit' is even mo...In the US the 'lack of benefit' is even more pronounced. Every year we have tens of thousands graduate with a bachelors degree who have learned nothing and worse, know absolutely nothing. I would dare say that most four year graduates know less than a typical high school graduate from 1950.<br /><br />And there's the nub. Forget benefit to society or merit. The problem with any argument about higher education, indeed public education in general, is the same problem as with any argument about abortion or global warming (or anything else bureaucrats touch) and that is that it is not an argument about the merits of education or abortion or carbon dioxide but about the MONEY that pays for those things. <br /><br />Theses "problem" as with all problems involving mankind have nothing to do with education, less to do with benefit and everything to do with man's inherit corrupt nature.<br /><br />How else do you explain the death of logic? Or, for that matter, something as human as reason?Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10211102380494013022noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-53429509016719865592010-07-23T22:44:09.875+01:002010-07-23T22:44:09.875+01:00Here is a way to annoy yourself, if not your colle...Here is a way to annoy yourself, if not your colleagues. Ask them what it is, exactly, they are teaching their students which makes them more productive in the workforce. The engineers come up with very plausible answers, as do the chemists. Some other disciplines come up with passable answers: physicists, mathematicians, a few others.<br /><br />For the most (most in the sense of most degrees) part, however, they come up with vaporous crap about critical thinking. Crap which so obviously bears no relationship to what actual students are actually doing all day in the classroom that it is maddening to hear it.<br /><br />But, it is very clear that people with bachelor's degrees earn more than do people without them, and it is reasonably clear that this is not due entirely to selection in the simplest sense (i.e. that high IQ people are paid more and that degreed people have high IQs; therefore, degreed people are paid more). That is, there are RCT analougues in which higher levels of educational credentials lead to higher earnings.<br /><br />As you have perhaps said and certainly alluded to before, the most likely explanation seems to be that employers use the credential as a signal of intelligence and conscientiousness in potential employees. And it is a good signal of these things, since you have to be reasonably smart and very conscientious to put up with getting a bachelor's degree. Plus, the degree signals that you have good parents, and the relevant sense of "good" is heritable. And, of course, requiring a degree is a magical way to weed out undesirables without exposing yourself to legal liability.Billnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-81365357012209065532010-07-23T13:32:07.551+01:002010-07-23T13:32:07.551+01:00@aliialiacensent - I don't thing the counting ...@aliialiacensent - I don't thing the counting will be consistent wrt Ireland over this timescale - but it doesn't really make any difference to the argument either way, since the population of Ireland is such a small proportion of that in Great Britain - I am only talking about the big picture number-wise. <br /><br />These are 'back of envelope calculations' - and while I would welcome anyone who can be bothered to calculate them more accurately (or point out any mistakes!) - it will not affect the conclusion significantly.Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-7230189819698831252010-07-23T12:08:46.807+01:002010-07-23T12:08:46.807+01:00Do the numbers for Britain prior to the 1949 entry...Do the numbers for Britain prior to the 1949 entry include all of Ireland?<br /><br />Here in the Republic we have politicians continuously bleating about "the knowledge econnomy" etc. I assume that they have not for a moment considered the distribution of IQ in the Irish population nor the relevancy of IQ to the matter of the economy.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com