Thread: Wasting money on Education!

The government is wasting a huge ammount of money on mis-educating our young people. About 1 trillion dollars are spent by the government in the USA on education each year.

The educators just want more and more money. Whatever is in their own interest. They are, in a way, like parasites.

Some of them try to make the argument that educating everyone will make everyone earn more money. This is an example of the fallacy of composition- what is true for an individual is not necessarily true of a larger group of individuals. Education is not the solution to lifting people out of poverty.

Only useful education helps create more wealth.

It seems that most forms of education is modern society are not useful, only competitive demonstrations of competency. In this sense then, education does not help create more wealth, but rather, in a way, is a waste of time and resources.

While on the scale of an individual, education leads to a higher personal income, this is not necessarily the case in society. Education often only leads to higher income because the employer would rather give the good paying jobs to those that have more education. So if other people obtain higher educational credentials, it will just mean lower incomes for the people that do not have such credentials.

The phenomena of economic disincentives caused by non-practical over-education in a society is called credentialism.

A society only needs a small portion of individuals to be educated in science, medicine, or advanced mathematics. Trying to teach a greater number of people these specialised areas of knowledge will not benefit society.


There are much more productive uses for all that money and labor.

Originally Posted by Anders Hoveland

The government is wasting a huge ammount of money on mis-educating our young people. About 1 trillion dollars are spent by the government in the USA on education each year.

The educators just want more and more money. Whatever is in their own interest. They are, in a way, like parasites.

Some of them try to make the argument that educating everyone will make everyone earn more money. This is an example of the fallacy of composition- what is true for an individual is not necessarily true of a larger group of individuals. Education is not the solution to lifting people out of poverty.

Only useful education helps create more wealth.

It seems that most forms of education is modern society are not useful, only competitive demonstrations of competency. In this sense then, education does not help create more wealth, but rather, in a way, is a waste of time and resources.

While on the scale of an individual, education leads to a higher personal income, this is not necessarily the case in society. Education often only leads to higher income because the employer would rather give the good paying jobs to those that have more education. So if other people obtain higher educational credentials, it will just mean lower incomes for the people that do not have such credentials.

The phenomena of economic disincentives caused by non-practical over-education in a society is called credentialism.

A society only needs a small portion of individuals to be educated in science, medicine, or advanced mathematics. Trying to teach a greater number of people these specialised areas of knowledge will not benefit society.


There are much more productive uses for all that money and labor.

All of the above is true, I think. The Soviet Union has already gone down this path and that's why our kitchens and bathrooms are cleaned by Soviet PhD's.

The industry of education is like many other industries, for example like the insurance industry, that creates its own markets by government legislation, not capitalistic supply-demand.

Educators are smart, they know that the government can corner the market of the country in their interest for them, and then they set whatever price they want. They don't even need to consider the students' ability to pay, because the attached student loan industry does the speculation for them without any risk. It is no accident that student loans are legislated not to clear in bankruptcy.

Comparing the USA with something else such as Germany, the USA doesn't even have a tradesman training system, like the German Fachhochschule, so in the USA you incur the same expense even if you don't plan on college.

In my humble opinion, the American education system would serve American students better if they majored them in penis size research, that way they will at least make money on what they learn.

The strong screening hypothesis, where education is deemed to only serve a certification role, has been rejected for yonks. Time for you fellows to catch up with economic reality. Perhaps some economics education would help?

Originally Posted by Reiver

The strong screening hypothesis, where education is deemed to only serve a certification role, has been rejected for yonks. Time for you fellows to catch up with economic reality. Perhaps some economics education would help?

Well, the problem is in essence that so many people have a college degree that it's no longer a "a status maker". And that has very predictable results.

First, since High School is not enough to get you even IN the door far a skilled job, everyone MUST go to some form of college. Then everyone has a 4-year degree, so that doesn't make you stand out enough to get you a good job. OK so now we're up to MBAs, and as more people get those, PhDs. eventually, we'll have to create something beyond PhD to give to students. In another 50 years, a PhD will be worth what a HS degree is now.

Second, as people need more and more degrees to stand out, they spend more and more of their most productive years in classrooms, NOT working, or working only part time. Most science is actually discovered by younger scientists, so this would cause somewhat a problem -- by the time we create our new scientist, he's 35-40, set in his ways, and won't invent things (Biology is an exception, but a small one). Add to that the utter impossiblitiy of raising a child before graduation -- and you have a big problem, which is to say that by the time a family is established enough to AFFORD to have children, the woman's ability to get pregnant is waning quickly. Also if you aren't going to be productive until 35, and retire at 65, that leaves you 30 years to build a life to retire on. I don't see how anyone can do that.

Finally, it creates a huge pressure to dumb down the early courses so that "everyone" can graduate. Is you're going to be unemployable with "merely" a BS, then we must make it possible for ANYONE to get a BS and more than likely an MS. I mean, you wouldn't want to sentence a kid to poverty would you? So that means that while right now, having an MS means that you're a "master" of the subject, it won't mean that soon because what "mastering a subject" means will be much much lower than it would have been in 2000. It's already happened with the BS. I have one. By the time I got INTO college in 1998, it was so dumbed down that essentially READING THE BOOK outside of class was usually enough to get you a B and in some cases an A. That's all it took. Read the book outside of class -- something that the teacher assigns all the time. For bonus, and an easy A, do the questions in the back. Shouldn't a college education require that I be able to do more than spit the book back to the teacher? Maybe using the information in the book to *gasp* solve a problem I've never seen before? Alas, no. And that's a 4-year degree. Soon, that's the master's degree as well -- because if the kids need MBAs to get a job, the system will provide one, whether they deserve it or not.

I think the best approach would be to limit the availablity of higher ed to people who are worthy, and make sure that HS can produce a graduate that can read and write and do math through at least calculus. Leave higher ed to people who have proven the ability to learn. At the very least it should cut down on the real reason kids like college -- binge drinking and drugs.

Originally Posted by septimine

Well, the problem is in essence that so many people have a college degree that it's no longer a "a status maker". And that has very predictable results.

First, since High School is not enough to get you even IN the door far a skilled job, everyone MUST go to some form of college. Then everyone has a 4-year degree, so that doesn't make you stand out enough to get you a good job. OK so now we're up to MBAs, and as more people get those, PhDs. eventually, we'll have to create something beyond PhD to give to students. In another 50 years, a PhD will be worth what a HS degree is now.

This is just repetition that education serves a certification role. We have to take into account that the strong screening hypothesis, where the human capital investment role is deemed to be irrelevant, is certainly rejected.

You're therefore voicing opinion that isn't quite consistent with the data!

Originally Posted by Reiver

This is just repetition that education serves a certification role. We have to take into account that the strong screening hypothesis, where the human capital investment role is deemed to be irrelevant, is certainly rejected.

You're therefore voicing opinion that isn't quite consistent with the data!

well, then try it. Apply for any non-manual-labor job without a 4-year diploma. See how many ever bother to talk to a HS grad even with a few years of experience. I've tried that, and mostly, you don't get anything. So if you can show me where HS graduates are getting anything beyond retail and fast food, I'd love to hear about it.

Originally Posted by septimine

well, then try it.

Why don't you support your argument with evidence? Can you show that education doesn't serve a human capital role? If you can't you're basing your opinion on hot air!

Goes to show that educated people contribute nothing to the USA. In fact they are so smart they screwed up the USA. Hence the reason the elite go to private schools in the USA.

Not all educators in the USA are stupid, they were smart enough to get a job where they can make a lot of money doing nothing and working fewer hours with no accountability. And they are smart enough to fool the massess in thinking they are worth more.

I university indeed does indeed, in many cases, serve more of a screening role than a human capital role, then one wonders why the government is paying so much money for private companies to screen their employees. Are not the taxpayers being taxed to benefit private businesses?

Originally Posted by Anders Hoveland

I university indeed does indeed, in many cases, serve more of a screening role than a human capital role, then one wonders why the government is paying so much money for private companies to screen their employees. Are not the taxpayers being taxed to benefit private businesses?

The strong screening hypothesis is rejected.