“University in the US is a waste of money and time”

BBC Mundo

“Most private universities don’t teach skills that are useful for the working world, and they are also a waste of money and time,”, Bryan Caplan, professor of Economics at George Mason University in Virginia, USA, said author of the book “The case against education: why the education system is a waste of time and money” (The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money) recently published.

There, he argues that the higher education system in the United States is unfair, harming not only the development of students but also that of society as a whole. Students attending private American universities can spend up to US$14,600,000 a year on tuition. Caplan proposes that young people finish college earlier to get a job and become independent adults at a younger age.

The following are his opinions in an interview for the BBC Mundo website:

Why does he say that the world would be better off if there were no universities for everyone?

Most private universities don't teach skills that are useful in the workplace. All they give you are certifications, which stick in your head like labels, and it seems like if a person has better grades and more certifications, they'll have a better chance of getting a good job.

But if everyone gets those labels, employers start selecting people based on the number of college degrees they have or need to have to be valuable and get interviewed.

Why, in your opinion, is it a waste of time and money?

People only obtain university degrees by investing many years. From an individual's perspective, it may just be time, but for society, it's a cost. Therefore, employers begin to look for less qualified people, without being overly demanding, for some jobs.

You say that students spend thousands of hours studying subjects irrelevant to the modern job market. What are they and why?

Each subject can be relevant to each person. If you study Latin, it will be relevant if you want to be a Latin teacher. I'm referring to subjects you rarely use in the job market, like history, poetry, literature, music, art… if you live in the United States, you'll never use a foreign language.

Social studies, mathematics, and even science are also important, as there are very few science jobs available. Aside from literacy and arithmetic, there isn't much else that's applicable to the real world.

I think it's wrong to assume that schools are teaching useful skills; some may be doing that, but ultimately what they do is provide certifications or people with more certifications, which are more valuable for getting a job.

If there is a disconnect between what students learn and what workers do, why is academic success so important for getting a job?

When employers decide to hire staff, they receive hundreds of applications, but they can't speak to each one. So they decide who is worth interviewing based on how you did at university.

Your academic success predicts that you're intelligent and hardworking, and that's what employers look for. Selection is based on predictions, not evidence.

You mention the concept of credential inflation, what is that?

As the educational quality of the workforce grows, the amount of education that people have for the same job that their parents or grandparents had will also grow.

The main reason why American workers are better educated is not because jobs demand greater cognitive abilities than they did 50 or 70 years ago.

Now, waiters, secretaries, and hotel workers are more educated than they used to be. And interestingly, some jobs require less than in the past; before, waiters would take your money at the table, now there's a machine that does it.

What do you do as a teacher to connect your students with the real world?

I start by asking them: Do you think you'll ever get a job where you'll use anything I'm teaching you today? If you become an economics professor, you might. But otherwise, no. But if you fail the class, or get bad grades, employers will care. I also talk to them about all the money they invested to finish college.

Would you recommend that an 18-year-old not go to university?

No. It all depends on how good a student was in high school. If they were good and don't continue on to college, they'll be missing out on many opportunities for better jobs. In the system we live in, employers decide your value based on your college degrees.

So if you choose not to have those credentials, you'll likely miss out on many jobs available. The system isn't fair and it's not socially beneficial, but that doesn't mean you won't have a good life if you don't participate in it.

What would a fair system look like then?

A better system would be for young people to finish university earlier and become independent adults at a younger age by learning a job through practical experience. Ultimately, you invest 17 years of your life to get a university degree and then don't really know what to do with it.

Then an employer hires you and trains you to do the job. That can happen sooner and would be fairer, because people are judged by what they actually do and not by years of education.

On the other hand, while work experience matters, many people can't access certain jobs because they lack a university degree. If you're highly talented but didn't attend university, it might take you 10 or 20 years to achieve the same success as someone with a degree. It's not impossible, but it takes many years of hard work to gain recognition.

Source: BBC Mundo

Replicated by the Observatory of the Colombian University

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