The case against education: why the education system is a waste of time and money

Almost every politician vows to spend more on education. As an insider, I can't help gasping, 'Why? You want us to waste even more?'. Typical students burn thousands of hours studying material that neither raises their productivity nor enriches their lives. Schools obviously teach some broadly useful skill - especially literacy and numeracy. High schools often include a few vocational electives - auto shop, computer programming, woodworking. Most colleges offer some career-oriented majors - engineering, computer science, premed. But what about all the other courses? All the other majors? Think of all the classes you ever took. How many failed to teach you any useful skills?. If education really fails to raise worker productivity, why do employers bid so lavishly for educated labor?. The answer is a single word I seek to burn into your mind: signaling. Even if what a student learned in school is utterly useless, employers will happily pay extra if their scholastic achievements provide information about their productivity. Lest I be misinterpreted, I emphatically affirm that some education teaches useful skills. when this book defends the signalling theory of education, similarly it does not claim that all education is signaling. It claims that a significant fraction of education is signalling. at least one-third of students' time in school is signaling. at least one-third of the financial rewards students enjoy is signaling. we would be better off if education were less affordable. If subsidies for education were drastically reduced, many could no longer afford the education they now plan to get. If I am correct, however, there is no cause for alarm. It is precisely because education is so affordable that the labor market expects us to possess so much. Without subsidies, you would no longer need the education you can no longer afford. Ultimately, I believe the best education policy is no education policy at all: the separation of school and state. (pp. 1-6, original emphasis)