Here is the first paragraph from Gary Becker’s article (emphasis mine),
An article by James Altucher, a columnist of the Financial Times, this past week essentially asserted that college and university education is a waste of time, that students would be better off by working rather than attending classes, or by using the money that went to tuition to travel instead. (“A mind is a terrible thing to waste but so is all the money that is being flushed down the toilet in the elitist quest for a good education. The best education is falling on the ground and getting a few scrapes. …Just don’t get robbed for four straight years [by going to college]“). Two days later a columnist of the Wall Street Journal, David Wessel, argued just the opposite, that the benefits of higher education have never been higher, at least in the United States, and that the puzzle is why more Americans do not finish high school and college. Who is right? The evidence is overwhelming that Wessel is right about the benefits of education, and that Altucher does not know the subject he is writing about.
And here is the first paragraph of Richard Posner’s take,
Becker marshals convincing evidence that people who have more education have on average higher earnings and that the spread has been growing. But it is a bit of a leap to conclude that there are high (and increasing) returns to education. Correlation is not causation. Suppose what are increasing are not the returns to education but the returns to intelligence, and suppose that people with high IQs both enjoy education more than other people do and are more likely to be admitted to college or a graduate or professional school because teachers prefer teaching (and learning from!) them and because good students are more likely (because they are more intelligent, not because they are good students) to be affluent, and therefore generous, alumni.
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Friday, 27 February, 2009 at 8:40 PM
University Education is really waste of time.
For Primary and Junior Secondary Education, it is useful because it concern about basic reading/writing skills, basic maths skills and some general knowledge. It is essential for their life to develop self-learning ability. Besides, Primary schools teachers are “real teacher”, they are not researcher of other non-educational field.
But in University, Professor in fact is just a researcher of its own field, they doesn’t pay too much effort on teaching and educate others. Besides,
University students already have self-learning ability, therefore, formal learning is not essential and necessary for them. Learning by their own during work, travel, and learn from the Internet and library is much more better.
Saturday, 28 February, 2009 at 9:19 AM
greentea,
So you must have some really horrible professors then?
I’ve seen some bad professors but luckily most of my professors are great teachers and some are even world class researchers.