Bryan Caplan's "The Case against Education": Uncovering the Truth about the Ineffectiveness of the Education System

Amazon Customer: Caplan is pithy and direct. He explains himself well, using helpful charts. He appears to address all points of view on the subject. And he’s funny too. I highly recommend this book.

United States on Sep 16, 2023

tyaki: I am Japanese university student and I'm trying to take a teacher licence. So, frankly speaking, I want to express some opposed opinions, but couldn't.
This is because the book answer my question I have had for long time and show how we should solve the problem.
However, I feel the author idea is similar to a certain class system in Mediaeval Ages, which is renovated for modern society. I don't know which is fair that we show our children the definite and useful class system or tell a lie that our education is useful and your dream come true by education.

Japan on Aug 05, 2023

Pedro Andrés Rangel Walteros: In this book the author considers two driving forces for the value of schooling: human capital and signalling. Human capital assumes that school teaches you valuable skills, while signalling proposes that the value of your schooling lies on what your diploma/credentials signal to the job market. In particular, the author proposes that a degree signals intelligence, consciousness, and conformity (and that it is hard to evaluate those three combined features which is the reason why the labor market relies on degrees).

The author proposes a 20/80 break down between human capital and signalling (i.e. 20% your education value comes from human capital while 80% comes from signalling). As he mentions in the book, he comes to this figures by a combination of data analysis and guesstimation.

The book's argument echoes the general sentiment that what matters about going to school is to get a diploma. Based on that argument, the author proposes that we should defund education, and instead spend those resources in something else.

The author strengthen his argument by making a sincere effort to address possible criticisms of his analysis. That being said, there are a...

Canada on Jan 02, 2021

Nick M: I've given this four stars because the concepts really are interesting to somebody like myself who's worked in education for a long time. However I'm not a social scientist, and therefore much of the book was something of a drudge to wade through due to the meticulous research detail included. For me, I would have been happy to read a condensed version comprising mainly chapter summaries! For any academic purists or those with a social science background, I think you'll love this.

United Kingdom on Nov 27, 2020

frankgfj: The cultural paradigm of our "civilized" societies which emphasizes schooling and education, is basically a self entertainment that basically provides nothing but signaling. The sublime humanistic goal of to refine individual characters and to enlighten their minds, is merely an illusion, as students never truly appreciate/utilize/remember what they've learned in school—— things that are supposed to be at the core of our civilizations that nourishes our souls, namely literature, history, and science, etc. The reality is, this sort of high culture has never been a part of ordinary people's life and never will, people will favor soap operates 100 times more than Shakespeare, care about the most trivial things in front of them instead of the most influential event in human history, and have no interests in science apart from occasionally hearing nutritionists telling them what food they shouldn't eat, or at most, hearing that earth is warming, yet drew no implications from it. This is just one example of the ideological cynicism in our culture——people know that education has failed completely in shaping the characters of the young, and what one learn in most cases have no...

Canada on Mar 18, 2018

Richard B. Schwartz: This is an important book, one which all educators, parents, students, taxpayers and policy makers should read and absorb. The title is a bit overwrought but the subject is of vast importance and the points of the book are argued rigorously. Bryan Caplan is a Berkeley/Princeton-trained economist who teaches at George Mason. He is a libertarian by political inclination but he says that his views on education were formed long before his views on politics were. As an economist he sometimes says things that appear to be crass; at the same time, as an economist, he says things that are supported by the data even though we might not want to hear them.

The essential argument concerns job skills and the fact that American education (including higher education) does not prepare students for jobs in the real world. Their coursework is still based on 19thc (and earlier) models in which individuals were trained to be clergymen, medical doctors or lawyers. That coursework is now largely dated, irrelevant, boring and out of touch with both student interests and the jobs that they might (realistically) seek. Everyone studies history but there are very few jobs for historians and the vast...

United States on Feb 05, 2018

Alberto Zaragoza Comendador: This is the most thorough book on education one could imagine. Page after page, chapter after chapter Caplan takes on all the possible pros and cons of education, and all the possible explanations for the advantages that education confers (or not) on students. It's so refreshing to find an author who takes on the challenge head-on instead of demurring "well, you know, it depends on your opinion".

There will be many reviews extolling the book's attention to detail (and Caplan's prose). So let me describe two small nitpicks.

First, Caplan uses two designations for different explanations of the education premium, related to how much of said premium is derived from human capital as opposed to signalling. An 80/20 divide, i.e. one in which 80% of the extra earnings that derive from getting a degree is due to signalling as opposed to human capital, is branded "reasonable". No problem with that, and no point in arguing semantics. The problem is that the other share is labelled "cautious" and, if I understood the text correctly, assumes signalling's share is only that due to the sheepskin effect, i.e. the bump in earnings that comes with graduation. (Thus, a person who drops...

Spain on Jan 23, 2018

Clay Garner: “For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men’s blood. I only speak right on;
I tell you that which you yourselves do know.’’
—Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (285)

Well. . .I think Caplan ‘will stir men’s blood’ with this work. Why?

‘I say what you already know’! What! How insulting!

Caplan’s conclusion is that ‘higher education’ serves as ‘signal’ for employers, and does not serve the educated. Why?

“From the standpoint of most teachers, right up to and including the level of teachers of college undergraduates, the ideal student is well behaved, unaggressive, docile, patient, meticulous, and empathetic in the sense of intuiting the response to the teacher that is most likely to please the teacher.’’ (14)
—Richard Posner

‘Signal’ for perfect corporate ball-bearing, round and round with no squeaking! Why so valuable to business?

“The road to academic success is paved with the trinity of intelligence, conscientiousness, and conformity. The stronger your academic record, the greater employers’ confidence you have the whole...

United States on Jan 17, 2018