Education – as it is conceived and practiced – is useless, quickly forgotten, expensive, unprofitable, and should be abolished. This is the provocative thesis of American economics professor Bryan Caplan.
Professor at the George Mason University (Virginia, United States), Bryan Caplan is an economist very involved in the promotion of “liberal thought”, notably through his participation in various think tanks (Mercatus Center, Cato Institute). From this point of view, the recommendations from his book published in 2018 are not really surprising: for him, there is no doubt that we must reduce spending on education, particularly higher education. The author’s thesis, set out in the introduction (p. 5), serves as a common thread throughout his essay. According to him, we are facing a kind of school inflation. We would be (collectively) much better off if fewer resources were devoted to education. To achieve this ideal, the surest path is to directly cut public spending on it.
To show that education is useless, the author lists a set of studies that allow us to draw a catastrophic portrait of the results of education in the United States (chapter 2). With figures to support his argument, he illustrates his main argument: education brings nothing; if students learn things, they forget them very quickly, because we only remember what we use regularly in everyday life. One might think that this thesis excludes a priori theinstruction (i.e. the most basic school skills: reading and counting) of this major challenge. But B. Caplan does not really take the trouble to reassure us on this point and leaves the reader the possibility of having a hard-line reading of his thesis, namely: for an individual who does not regularly use these basic skills in his daily life, investment ininstruction is also useless.
If you are not convinced by the argument of this second chapter, there is no point in reading the book any further: you will not be convinced by the rest of the thesis, which is only its unfolding, the long inventory of its consequences in other fields of social life, first on the labor market and theories to explain the remuneration of graduates (chapters 3 and 4), then again on the remuneration of graduates from their own point of view (chapter 5), then from the point of view of society as a whole (chapter 6). The following chapters allow us to say that, “no” not all education is good to throw away (chapter 7), and that “yes” certain forms of education are useful, but are not really developed at present (chapters 8 and 9). Chapter 10 offers a series of dialogues to help the reader to push his reflection further.
Reactivation of the “signal”
Reducing or containing public spending on education is not strictly speaking a new idea. But the author’s theoretical originality is that he reactivates a structuring opposition of the labor economy of the 1970s, which sought to theoretically establish the differences in salaries between graduates and others. His originality is that he chooses as champion, the theory that emerged “loser” from these debates. Indeed, two theories were in conflict, the human capital theory and the signal theory. While the concept of human capital popularized by the economist G. Becker has been widely disseminated among public decision-makers and has entered common language to talk about education or health spending, the concept of diploma as a signal has not had the same success, at least with the general public.
For B. Caplan, the level of education, and the diploma that goes with it, do not strictly speaking have an effect on human capital, that is to say on the “stock of knowledge” that an individual possesses. And for good reason, as he likes to remind us throughout the book, individuals with degrees hardly remember what they learned during their schooling! For him, the diploma therefore only plays a role as a signal to potential employers: the number of years of study in particular most often only reveals abilities already present in the individual before their studies; the diploma is rarely proof of intelligence and at best indicates a spirit of discipline, or even conformism, which can however interest companies and would explain the differences in salaries upon hiring between graduates and non-graduates.
The theoretical cost of a return to liberalism
What is first striking in this essay is the staging of a writing against the “purists of human capital”. A somewhat rapid reading of the work could lead one to think that B. Caplan writes against G. Becker and his human capital theory. But in fact, this is not the case. Apart from the initial postulate (education is useless), the economic theory of educational choices used in the rest of the book is essentially the same, as are the conclusions: in the general case, it is better to let individuals choose whether or not to continue their studies, but leaving the cost of these studies to their own expense.
In fact, even if it is never clearly named, B. Caplan’s target would rather be the theory of social investmentsone of the main characteristics of which is to construct a theoretical framework justifying social expenditure (education, health, etc.) on the basis of their profitability. According to this approach, education expenditure (and social expenditure in general) is not a waste of money. It has a measurable return and must therefore be considered as an investment. From this point of view, the author implicitly distances himself from a set of empirical results from the theory of human capital, which, in line with the work launched by J. Heckman, show, for example, the interest in invest in early childhood.
In terms of the history of ideas, B. Caplan’s work can be considered a return to “liberal fundamentals”, which completely abandons the concept of “human capital” to the proponents of social investment. In essence, the interest of the author’s very particular positioning is to show us retrospectively the progressive distancing of the concept of human capital from the very liberal and anti-redistributive intuitions that saw its birth. He also shows us at what price it is possible to maintain an economic theory of education with ultra-liberal conclusions on public spending on education: we must deny education any lasting effect on the individual.
Companies in the blind spot
The author says it over and over again throughout the book: everything that an individual has learned and does not use regularly is quickly forgotten. This assertion allows him to identify the only type of education that finds favor in his eyes: vocational education (vocational education). Indeed, we can think that it is the only type of education that aims to acquire skills that can be used directly for a job. Following the author’s theses on the “theory” of knowledge, we can even think that using one’s skills every day in one’s job allows one not to forget them and therefore to make the education received “really useful”.
Readers who would have liked a more in-depth discussion on the link between professional skills and general knowledge (are they independent or complementary?) will be disappointed. Similarly, the distinction between specific human capital, which describes skills acquired on the job and not transferable to a position in another company, and general human capital, which includes all of this transferable and valuable knowledge regardless of the position or company, is not discussed. Finally, the social cost of excessive professional specialization, which can result in difficulties in salary progression or the need for retraining during a career, is not discussed either.
In B. Caplan’s book, companies are there to hire individuals who stand out because of their diploma, but that’s all! The question of their strategies, the skills they are looking for, job offers that do not find takers or, more generally, the current developments in the labor market (we are thinking in particular of the theory of the polarization of jobs at the two extremes of the distribution of skills) are not really discussed. Nor are the consequences in terms of education.
An incomplete liberal argument
Concerning public spending on education, B. Caplan’s recommendations are clear. In his concluding chapter, he summarizes them by saying that it is appropriate to start by eliminating everything in order to eventually develop training focused on professions. These conclusions are perplexing. The insistence on the interest of vocational training that he defends as the only possible horizon for public education, and the absence of an analysis of the needs of businesses give the book with its very liberal conclusions an incomplete argument.
From this point of view, this essay clearly lacks a discussion of the links between the training system and the labor market in order to fully understand the author’s recommendations. This lack is certainly linked to the very American-centric nature of the work. When reading it, it is not very clear whether the ideal model implicitly defended by the author is a kind of German-style vocational training model characterized by early selection in the education system, strong involvement of companies in lifelong training and relatively restricted access for individuals to higher education, which contrasts sharply with the American model characterized by significant access to higher education and a very high level of individual and collective spending on education. If this is the case, we would have liked a more in-depth discussion of the limits currently encountered by the German system and, more generally, a reflection in international comparisons on the type of equality of opportunity generated jointly by the institutions of the education system and those of the labor market. We will be left wanting more.