I enjoyed this book!

Admittedly, I am biased against school to start with (I’m a drop out and always hated school). But this book takes all of my juvenile complaints about school and amplifies them with logic and data. The author is an economist and he really dissects the cost-to-benefit ratio for each level of education.

His argument isn’t that school is completely useless, but rather that the main benefit of school is simply to “signal” your employability - i.e. a “good student” is more likely to be a good worker. The degree shows work ethic and compliance more than actual competence in the skills or knowledge of the particular job. The signaling model has been discussed for decades but this is the best rendition of it that I have seen.

This explains why a school system that spends so much time on useless “knowledge” can still actually be beneficial for the student - the student WILL make more money with the degree, but not because they have learned more useful knowledge, simply because they signal employability.

What’s wrong with this? The benefit to the student doesn’t match the benefit to society, which is thoroughly explained in the book. Further, since degrees are MOSTLY signaling, we have seen the consequence: an inflationary need for more degrees. You need a degree for almost every job now, because almost every applicant has a degree - again, having nothing to do with what was actually “learned.”

There is a lot more to the case than I can fit into a review, and I recommend the book. There are some obvious changes to the system suggested in the book that I think make a lot of sense and we should take seriously.