We Don't Need No Education
Part of the current debate on the government stimulus package is where the money goes. Apparently, some of our GOP folks are balking at sending money toward education. Which, of course, got me thinking about a post that I had started back in September (the next paragraph, below). So now, for all of our amusement/dismay, I will finish that post.
A little while back, the good folks over at the Freakonomics blog put up a post that discussed the potentially illegal use of race-based admissions over at UCLA. Not surprisingly, I have a very strong opinion about how we do college admissions. However, my guess is that you wouldn't be able to guess my opinion. And that's because I'm pretty much a sociopath.
I think that way too many people go to college. Why is this happening? I've blamed the feminist movement in the past, and I'm sticking with my story. There's more to it than women leaving the bedroom/kitchen, but it's a starting point.
Over the past 60 years, there's a trend of higher education being more geared toward getting people ready for jobs (rather than teaching them how to think). That's not the focus of this, but keep that in the back of your mind. More to the point here, more and more women have gone to college. Let's say higher education has room for 100 students. In 1950, this would have been 90 guys, and 10 girls (9.7 of whom would then become school teachers or nurses). And when everyone graduates, the 100 students are absorbed into the workforce. Everyone's happy: the workforce gets high quality workers, we get high quality teachers, the people who invest in higher education gets additional value, etc.
Now, imagine a system of equality. One thought would be to simply say, fine. We're going to leave it at 100 students, and we'll just trim 40 guys, and add 40 girls. That would actually increase the overall ability, if you assume that guys and girls have the equal intelligence, and the workforce is a more efficient place, save for basic education, since the girls that end up as teachers are likely not the top 10 of their gender, like in the past, but more likely at the bottom of the higher education sample, probably in the 30 to 50 range. But it's a reasonable situation.
But, I don't believe that's really the case. We know that kids tend to have higher educational attainment than their parents. This is actually not the case with the latest stats here in the U.S., but it's close. (As an aside, this would totally be my fault, if I had kids - I mean, who stays in college for 13 years, really?) But in any case, this means that the situation that I described isn't really the case. Rather, higher education has expanded. So now, we need to not only keep the original 90 guys, but we need to bring in 90 girls to balance it out. The overall ability level of graduates is roughly the same, and you'll note that the quality of school teachers decreases further, probably down to the 60-90 (out of 90) range. But the workforce is only ready to accept 100 workers. You can probably fit some more workers in there, and expand it out to 140 or 150. But there's still some folks there who aren't really employable. We'll call them "English majors" or something like that.
And it's not just the womenfolk that are draggins us down. Back when you only had 90 guys and 10 girls in college, they were probably all white. Now, we start getting black, brown, yellow, and red people in the mix. If you take similar exercises and start adding in other demographics, particularly the black and Hispanic figures, where test scores and admittance criteria seems to be lower, then you start to see not only the overabundance of educated folks, but also degradation in the overall ability of college grads.
So what has the corporate world done? Basically, they've found out that they can take college grads and put them into jobs where you don't need a college degree, and get better performance. Think about most jobs in the corporate world. What percentage of the accomplished tasks could not be done without the training you get in college? A relatively small percentage, I'd bet. Even in engineering, if you gave similar on the job training, you could get competent performance with a sharp high school kid for most tasks (at least you could at GE when I interned there).
So what does a college degree really mean for employers?
That you're going to show up.
No kidding. Folks in interorganizational and occupational psychology (like my buddy Judge) look at this stuff. What the degree (and your activities and stuff) signal is that you're going to show up to class to the point where you'll pass, and get your degree.
And for employers, the most important signal that you give to employers is that you'll show up. The next most important? That you'll be reasonable to work with. The working hypothesis is that most employers know that the tasks that employees are asked to complete are so simple that competence is assumed. There are naturally a few exceptions, and you'll see where ability is really valued. But for many positions, succes isn't driven by intelligence and knowledge, but rather by dilligence and quality control.
So what does any of this have to do with the stimulus package and bailout money? If you accept the assumption that colleges have become more vocational in their orientation, then this begs the question of the effectiveness of this mission. Do we really need this many people with college educations for the workforce? It's nice to have, but it costs. Government subsidies for college scholarships, university funding, etc. all come out of our tax dollars. Now, if you were going to say that we were going to subsidize basic research, I'd be all for it. Advancement of knowledge has been a crucial aspect to the American competitive advantage in the last 125 years. But subsidizing vocational training is different - why are we paying taxes so that a places like General Motors and General Mills have college grads filling roles that could be done my trained monkeys? I'd even argue that the education we require for the medical profession (doctors, pharmacists, etc.) is overkill. Most of the tasks they complete are checklists, which could be manned by a well-designed computer program and a chimp. But that's an aside.
In any case, what's my position? Less money for vocational training. More money for the advancement of basic knowledge. Better computer programs and more chimps in the workforce. And more euthanasia, which isn't really part of my argument here, but I just wanted to remind everyone of my platforms for my future presidential campaigns.
-Chairman
6 comments:
Apparently the overabundance of educated folks isn't isolated to the U.S.
As would be expected, I have some points to quibble with.
I see what I think are a few errors with this reasoning.
First, this assumes that achievers at every level are about as educated as they were in the past. However, multiple studies show that education IQ is going up, and in general, people are 'smarter' than in the past. So today's average achievers may be equivalent to yesterday's above-average students.
Second, you're assuming that since you could do a job without college, that college isn't worthwhile. That's not necessarily so. I don't think it can be argued that people learn nothing in college. They're still learning stuff. And what it may be is a broad basic understanding of knowledge across the spectrum. This is a central tenet of the American educational system. And it's part of the reason we don't do as well as other countries on achievement exams. Our public school system, including college to a large extent, is committed to providing a 'well-rounded' education. We want to teach kids not just the very specific skills in their niche, but give them a broader education. Whether this approach is good or not can be argued, but I do think it's occurring.
Finally, I would note that you're very unfair in blaming minorities for lowering educational results due to their inclusion at all educational levels. Much more accurate would be to say that even poor people are now being given the opportunity for higher education. Does that maybe mean more minorities? Possibly. But describing this group of students by their socioeconomic class would have been much more fair and accurate.
Westy. I haven't offended your liberal sensibilities, have I? :-) I'll respond in the order of your comments.
First, IQ's normalized, right? Strictly speaking, with IQ, I think that it's set such that the mean is 100 and standard deviation is 10. I'm not super up to date on these studies, but I'd have to look very closely at how they operationalize IQ.
I'm not saying that college isn't worthwhile. I completely agree that people learn while they're in college. My point is that it isn't practical from a societal standpoint to be subsidizing the college experience for people who are heading for jobs where the knowledge isn't necessary.
Related point, I'd argue that we're moving away from a well-rounded knowledge base at the college level. Students are demanding to be prepared for the workforce. This is vocational training. Plus, look at the program of study for different majors. How much math do humanities majors take? And vice versa?
Finally, I won't comment on whether commenting on race is fair or not. But I'll comment with regard to whether it was accurate. As far as I know, there's no definitive causality that's been found (separating SES and race/ ethnicity), given the heavy overlap between the these factors. However, if I was a betting man (and I am), I'd bet that race is a better variable to use than income in this context. When you have systematic racism (i.e., affirmative action), that forces inclusion of different races, then you're virtually guaranteed to see a greater influence on race. To your point, the poor have had increased access to college, but I don't recall any change in admission policy that's been geared toward increasing admission for the poor. And more to the point, financial aid is only negotiated after admission, right? So from an ability standpoint, you can definitely point to race-based admission policy as a factor. I'm not sure if you can do the same for income (though I'm open to the idea, if you can point me to some information).
First, IQ's normalized, right?
Exactly. The point is that a 100 today probably would have been a 110 back in the day. And so on. If the population as a whole grows smarter, a 100 scorer today is smarter than a 100 scorer of yesteryear. Check out James Flynn for some good info on this.
My point is that it isn't practical from a societal standpoint to be subsidizing the college experience...
Agreed if it's not good for society. However, the extent to which a broad based education is or is not good for society is very difficult to measure; and I would argue, up for debate.
So from an ability standpoint, you can definitely point to race-based admission policy as a factor.
Yes, but I would argue that it is because of the race-based admissions that more poor people have entered college, and thus done slightly poorer. I think the results would be correlated with their socioeconomic class, not their race.
Westy -
1. So, part of the confusion was over terminology. My point is that average IQ can't change over time. You're pointing out that the ability that corresponds to an average IQ has increased over time. These ideas aren't mutually exclusive, so I don't think that we are in any disagreement to this point. However...
Took a look at the Flynn stuff. The most important part (assuming that the Wikipedia entry on "Flynn effect" is reliable) is that the gains were concentrated in the lower half of the distribution, and not in the upper half. What does this mean? The basic education gap has closed. If this argument holds, this is commentary about the accessibility of K-6, since this is where the greatest gains in abstract thinking are achieved, and not particularly relevant to higher education.
The fact that there are no gains in the upper half actually supports my position. For your position to hold, there would need to be a shift in the entire bell curve to the right. So, assuming that the numbers he uses are OK, I'd quibble with the theoretical explanation. The best explanation is likely not an increase in "general intelligence" (Google Charles Spearman), but the simplest explanation is improved test-taking ability (garnered by greater entry into public schools).
2. Definitely agree that this is a point worth debating.
3. Of course there's a correlation (likely a heavy one) between income and race and other SES factors. But the point that I make is that admissions have been explicitly influenced by race, whereas income is a by-product, thus the variable of race is the most direct, observable comparison.
One thing to consider. If it is significant, the link between race and intelligence can only go in one way. Race --> intelligence. You can not say that intelligence --> race (unless you get into some really convoluted social Darwinism argument...) However, with regard to income the effects go back and forth. Intelligence --> income (particularly your income). And income --> intelligence (particularly your parent's income). So, examining them separately, the logical conclusion should be that race is the more powerful variable in this examination.
I think that a more accurate statement that reflects your point of view is that, "the interaction of income and race, rather than race alone, would be a much fairer, and more interesting examination."
And I'd whole-heartedly agree. I just like having some fun with you, particularly when you get all worked up.
Ha, well I guess I wouldn't consider myself "all worked up". I just enjoy discussing.
I pretty much agree w/ your last post (I know, that's no fun). I would note that I definitely do not consider myself an expert on the 'Flynn effect'. But I would guess there will be a lot more research on this going forward.
I still don't quite concur with your statement that, "...race is the more powerful variable..." either. If it's income that is the explanatory variable, even if it's highly correlated with race and it's due to racial admission policies that it's become possible, that still makes income the more powerful variable. It's not the variable that explains their presence in schools, but the one that explains their performance. But more study is needed here too.
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