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The Value of Education, The Value of Experience
R. Alex Whitlock
Yesterday I suggested that higher education is, in some ways, a
zero-sum game. If everyone has a college degree, that degree becomes less valuable. Oxblog's
David Adesnik (whose post I was responding to) and commenter and
congressional candidate Scott Chacon
responded. Both of which are very thoughtful and have given me a lot to chew on throughout the day.
Their argument, as I read it, seems to come down to two main points:
1. Increasing education will create its own opportunities.
2. A more educated work force is a better work force, regardless of whether or not their degrees are directly related to their adopted career field.
For all I know, both of these arguments may be correct. But I retain my doubts on the matter.
Adesnik notes that the same argument against universal college education could have been made post-WWII for universal high school education and history has indicated that the latter was a worthwhile investment.
The question is: at what point can we say "they have enough education to enter the work force" and direct young people to do so? It's hard to determine, though I'd say that it's some point after high school and before a four-year degree. Keep in mind I am talking about "the work force" in general and not those career tracks, such as medicine or engineering, that do make use of four years of college and beyond. As long as the public school system is in the shape that it's in, I think it would be worthwhile for people to take a year of life preparation courses to tackle such subjects as personal finances and organizational structure.
But regardless of where we put the pin on the timeline, I believe that we'll have to move it again later. If everyone gets a bachelor's degree, more and more jobs will start requiring a master's, all the way up to PhD. While on one hand it would be wonderful for everyone to get the opportunity to do that, taking everyone out of the economy until they're 27 is a financial drain on the economy through the sheer expense of education and young people taken out of the workforce. I'm not sure even David or Scott would disagree with me on that point.
As to whether or not increased education will create its own opportunities, that's a speculative argument on both sides. High school education for everyone post-WWII proved worthwhile, but since we've made the shift from a manufacturing to an information-based economy, I think we may have gotten what we're going to get from that. If a need for higher levels of education were required, we'd see a higher premium put on education than on experience. In some areas (such as police work) we do, but for the most part I see parity-leaning-towards-experience.
I worked while I went to college and I'm very glad I did because I've seen countless more jobs ask for experience (but not a degree) than those asking for a degree (but not experience). My job hunting experiences are limited to the IT sector in Houston and Idaho, but in both cases while the college degree helped get me in front of the line it was the work experience that got me in the line to begin with. And honestly I can't say that I necessarily blame them.
While those of us that went to college were going to college, others were working. If I was looking at an unskilled, inexperienced, and uneducated 18 year old and a degreed 22 year old, you can bet I'd hire the latter. If I was looking at a 22 year old with four years of experience (even at a position lower than what I'm hiring) and another 22 year old with no experience and a degree, they'd be on almost equal footing. The difference is that the second person's education cost somewhere to the tune of $40,000 and the second was making a positive contribution to the economy while making money. And I don't doubt either's ability to make a better mousetrap or make a faster cup of coffee. That depends almost as much on the type of experience, the type of education, and the type of person rather than the years invested in either of the first two.
To use Scott's fish/fishing metaphor, it's not at all clear to me that four years spent on the lake is all that much less valuable than four years spent in the classroom learning all about your prey.
A college degree is valuable. It demonstrates less what you know and more what you are capable of. It demonstrates your work ethic, your dedication, your ability to manage your time, and countless other attributes. But so can work. College can prepare you to start your own business, but so can working in the industry of the business that you'd start. College can prepare you to build the better mousetrap, but so can spending four years working with mousetraps. College is the easier way to do these things, but the main reasons that they are (ability to secure loans, ability to get a job in which you have input, and an employer's willingness to take you seriously) are because of markers that society puts to differentiate those that jumped through the college hoops (no pun intended) and those that didn't. Erase that distinction and you're simply putting everyone in the same line.
Observations
It's very weird to me to hear people talking about putting more people through college when our public education system is so messed up. I think if we fix our public education system, it will all even out in the end anyway.
Many people I talk to that didn't go to college (and myself included) dispise higher education for a reason not related to anything other than being sick of school. Most of use don't even really know what college is like compared to grade school. High School should be preparing you for college, but aside from a few key parts (junior research paper, etc.) it's falling short by leaps and bounds.
There is just so much wrong with our public education that it's simply not preparing nor encouraging students to continue. Of all my years in school, I only remember a few (2-3) teachers that every made me enjoy learning.
Kavey,
An argument could be made that the fact that companies are not guaranteed that a high school graduate has an education is why they place the value they do on a college degree. Then, in turn, the fact that you can't get a decent job without a high school degree has made getting high school students that piece of paper more important than making sure that they've earned it. One of my fears is that universalizing college education would have the same effect: lowered standards to help young people meet degree milestones will devalue the actual worth of the degree and leave employers requiring a master's in order to demonstrate basic intellectual competence.
In 1996 Richard Grenier wrote about this subject and recounted the story of a woman he knew who applied for a job at a high-end Fifth Avenue retailer in New York. The job duties involved clipping copies of the store's ads in newspapers and pasting them in a binder. That was it!
The punchline is that she didn't get the job because she had only a bachelor's degree while the successful applicant had a master's degree. All to paste newspaper clippings.
We have WAY too many college graduates with hugely unrealistic expectations chasing far too few jobs that require their ever more questionable credentials in such as "critical queer studies", and we need to cut their numbers substantially over the next ten years by making entrance requirements higher (being able to demonstrate an ability to read would be a good start), and cutting state subsidies to less than stellar schools.
I don't want to run this into the ground, but I do want to quickly explore a few points. Of course, by 'quickly', I mean at incredible and mind numbing length.
1) providing free higher education for those who seek it is a valuable and worthwhile investment for the country
2) higher education provides personal and professional value you often cannot get through work experience alone
3) educational competition is not a zero sum game
4) public education is not that bad
1)
Higher education should not be mandatory for every American, but it should be absolutely affordable for every American who wants it. I think that taking everyone who seeks higher education out of the economy until they are 27 is not a drain on the economy, it is an investment. That's like saying putting perfectly good cash in the bank is draining the economy because you're not spending it. It would be if everyone did it with all of their money, but it is imperitive that many people do it for the economy to function at all. There will always be people who don't value education, who don't want to go to college, and don't care. There are many options for these people, they will be employed in most cases, and they are important. They are good and kind and often very smart people, and I have many of them in my family. However, there are also people who value education, who want to attend college, and cannot afford it. This is devastating to our economy.
You state "we've made the shift from a manufacturing to an information-based economy" - I could not agree more, and this is unbelievably important to this argument. Globalization and free trade has made our unskilled job market increasingly exportable. The information economy has created technology at an unprecedented rate that can replace more unskilled jobs. The response to this has historically been protectionism (tariffs, etc), which is also harmful to our economy. We will hopefully never be able to make clothing or assemble cars cheaper than China or Mexico through unskilled labor alone, and the only long term way to ensure that we don't have to is education. When we were a manufacturing economy, unskilled labor was fine - you could make a living with whatever you learned on the job. The information economy is not looking for people it can just train to do the job well, that is expensive for the company. This economy looks for people that bring something to the job, and a broad and comprehensive education helps to ensure that person has something to contribute. Unskilled labor is available anywhere in the world, and because of our cost of living, it will almost always be cheaper, and it is increasingly becoming a viable alternative to our own unskilled labor force. Skilled and educated workers, however, are in short supply, and we are importing them from other countries. We should educate any American who wishes because it is that education that is one of this country's greatest assets. Preventing people from getting an education because we think it may water down its value is economic suicide. We cannot compete in the long term in a global economy through work experience alone, we have to create new types of work. That requires a type of thinking that is far easier and more likely to attain with a comprehensive education.
2)
I personally think education should be continuing. My wife, for instance, is a full time public high school teacher and is also earning her Masters degree. I work full time and still occasionally try to take community college courses. The reason is that we both highly value education, probably because our parents did. We value it not because of the job offers it may produce, but because we believe that it is valuable in itself. Being exposed to new things keeps your mind active and interested, and open to new ideas. It opens up new avenues and new interests, not just to further whatever path you have set yourself upon, but to show you things you never thought to be interested in. I will always try to convince my family, friends and children to go to college, because I greatly feel that is their best option. Not because the degree is an important symbol, but because the education itself is so valuable.
Furthermore, from a purely professional viewpoint, the knowledge and skills that a higher education provides are rarely the same that you get with work experience alone. For instance, I worked for my father for a short time in high school as a lab technician, making external body braces (my father is an orthotist). I could make a living doing that, and I worked there long enough to know how to produce the braces, and I became quite adept at it. I could do 90% of the work of making a custom KAFO. However, no matter how long I worked there, I could never have done my fathers job. I knew nothing of human anatomy, kinesiology, pathological gait, biomechanics, etc. No amount of onsite experience without academic study could have prepared me to do his job without injuring people. It is the same with doctors and lawyers and police officers and paramedics and electricians and countless others. No amount of job experience alone will allow you to become any of these. It is possible to get away with no formal education in the software industry, or perhaps even in business, but not in most professions.
"To use Scott's fish/fishing metaphor, it's not at all clear to me that four years spent on the lake is all that much less valuable than four years spent in the classroom learning all about your prey."
And, to make my final point on this topic, and to take this metaphor to a somewhat ludicrous conclusion, the schooling may not make a better fisherman in the short term, but what happens if the lake runs out of fish? The first guy will be starving, while the second could open a fishery to breed and release fish into the lake to sustain the population and then charge the first man to fish there again. The first man is limited by the extent of his domain of knowledge, while the second has a broader range of what he is capable of doing. It may sound ridiculous, but it illustrates my point, which is that education enables options. I make my living now by being good at what I did to put myself through college, but I will stay relevant and employed thoughout my whole life because of what I learned in college.
"A college degree is valuable. It demonstrates less what you know and more what you are capable of. It demonstrates your work ethic, your dedication, your ability to manage your time, and countless other attributes." I don't think a college degree is valuable for what it demonstrates - those qualities you mention are why you have the degree, the degree is not why you have those qualities. There will be individuals who have work ethic, dedication and intelligence, regardless of whether they attend college or not. What is important is what you obtain by pursuing the degree. How to learn something you are not inherently interested in. How to efficiently and quickly find information that you don't know. How to ask questions, how to love learning, and most importantly - how much you don't know. It gives you exposure to things you may never otherwise have been interested in, it allows you to open yourself up to the opinions of others.
3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
When more people have a degree, the degree itself may become less useful in a specific marketplace, but the education does not become less valuable. It is not a zero-sum game, very much like the economy is not a zero-sum game. That one person gets a job does not at all mean that another person loses one, or makes less money. Economically, the more education a country has, the higher the employment rate, and the more jobs are available in that country (all things being equal). Education, like employment, enriches everyone involved.
I disagree that education will become a game of escalation, where pretty soon everyone will have to have a PhD to compete in the job market. If we are lucky, and it does expand, I would think it would spread outward, where people will have two or three BAs or Masters degrees, where we have flexible workers who can draw from several disciplines to solve problems and think creatively. In my experience, the most productive and useful engineers in the workplace are not the ones who can solve some complex theorem, but the ones who can think of their engineering projects while also considering the marketability, usability, financial solvency and aesthetic qualities of their project. I don't think the focus will get narrower, but more broad and encompassing.
4) "As long as the public school system is in the shape that it's in ..."
Public school is not that bad, I went to public school my whole life, as did all of my family and most of my friends, and we are doing fairly well for ourselves. My wife is a public school teacher, and I have volunteered in public schools, and I think it is an invaluable part of our society. Some schools do not provide a great environment, some are underfunded, some waste their money, but many of them are quite good. The real, deep, difficult problem in America as far as public education goes is not the public school system so much as the public itself. People do not intrinsically value education as much anymore. The fact that we're even having this discussion is evidence of that. The good schools are not the schools with the most money or even the best teachers, they are the ones with the most involved parents. Normally that means the richest kids, but that is because richer people tend to be more highly educated and to more highly value education.
I got a good education in high school and attended a good public college because my parents pushed me and paid attention and valued it. My children will get a good education too, pretty much no matter what school they go to. My cousin is just now graduating from the same high school I did, with the same teachers, and I know he is very smart. He is not going to college, and did not get a good education though high school because his parents don't value it. Neither of them went to college, and both of them blame his teachers for any poor grades he receives. Now, is my high school a good or a bad public school?
There are problems and serious issues to address in public high school education, but no amount of work will significantly help until we highly value education as a society. Our public school system is entirely capable of educating and engaging students with a motivation and a desire to learn, and is occasionally capable of creating that desire in students. It embraces and educates students with physical and mental disabilites, second language learners, and students that cannot afford their own school supplies, all in class sizes that often exceed 30:1. It struggles with students whose parents tell them continously that it is not their fault they are failing Algebra or English because it is boring and pointless and the teacher is stupid. Private schools and home schools do not have to deal with this, and yet they still do only marginally better, if at all, on standardized test scores. If we really want to have excellent public schools, we need to foster a culture that motivates its parents to highly value education and educators.
Bottom line, I think education is intrinsically important, and it is worth it to the country as a whole to pay for it for anyone who seeks it at any level.
Scott,
I appreciate the thought that you've put into your responses. This will probably be my last two cents on the matter due to lack of time, but I would like to say a few things.
First, on a personal level I agree with a heck of a lot of what you have to say about the worth of an education. I've actually posted before on an interest I have in going to law school. I've long since decided that I don't want to be a lawyer, but the education would help me become the person that I've always wanted to be and would be an asset in any career path that I would take. More about that here:
http://raw360.com/index.php...
I'm not against college education. I believe that for a lot of people it's very worthwhile, but I believe that the number of people that benefit from it are fewer than you do. This is especially true when a lot of people go to college solely for utilitarian reasons (to get that job) and not for an education. As they feel that they have to in order to get a decent job, I believe that a larger percentage will be those people. These are difficult things to prove or disprove, though.
We seem to be approaching the subject with largely different assumptions about what college provides. I view it from a more vocational/utilitarian standpoint and you from a more enlightenment-oriented perspective. Frankly, I don't believe that a lot of people get from college what you and I did from an enlightenment standpoint (and if I hadn't stumbled in to my schools Honors College, I wouldn't have gotten it either). Most of the (non-honors) classes I took were technical in nature, but as soon as I got a job I had to re-learn just about everything. On one hand, if I'd taken a more abstract ("fuzzy") major I might have gotten more memorable things out of it -- but I also wouldn't have immediately the rote skills that got me my first job. With the exception of my current employer, the rest were much more concerned about whether or not I knew the ins and outs of this specific programing language rather than that I had a fundamental understanding of the logical reasoning involved. Honestly, I think employers should be a lot more concerned with the latter, but they're not and unless we can change the we-don't-want-to-have-to-train-anybody employment environment (which I have advocated in the past), those that go to college and get enlightened will be less employable than those that use college as a vocational tool.
I'm looking at this from the perspective of the employers that I've had and those jobs I've tried to get. I see a college degree being used simply as a mechanism to weed out a large pool of applicants (the ones without a degree). The same applies for things like loans and insurance rates, neither of which are directly affected by what you learned in college. It's actually a better measure than most as college demonstrates the skills I listed in my post. Of course, it also leads those that are unserious about academia to get degrees and it discriminates against those without the resources to dedicate themselves to a college career. I'm less comfortable with that, but the remedy in my mind is changing the ways we determine who goes to college rather than sending more people there.
You're right that the education one gets from college is not a zero sum game. It does, however, compete directly with work and life experience. There is a trade-off involved that I don't believe you are giving enough attention. To extend our already overextended fish metaphor even further, no one eats if everyone is inside learning about aquatic biology and no one is outside fishing. There is a limit to how long it's worthwhile to take someone out of the economy (and how many people you take out of it). Apparently for you it seems to be a decade or so after high school while for me it's somewhere shortly after leaving (or, if we can get our public education act together, at the end of high school). We can argue till our faces turn blue and I don't think we'll get anywhere towards convincing one another.
I'd also like to say a word or two about the public school system. Honestly, I have a pretty dour view of it. But believe it or not, I actually agree with a lot of what you have to say about it. While I believe that administrators carry some of the blame, I put a lot on the shoulders of parents. I had some substantial learning difficulties going through school and fell behind in a pretty serious way. Had my father not sat down with me every night after dinner to help me catch up and give me some faith in what I was able to accomplish, I'd never have made it through high school much less college. If every parent was as interested and involved as mine (and apparently yours) our school system wouldn't have any problems. But that's not the case. Kids aren't learning and schools are passing them through anyway (in part because the parents will have a cow if their little terror ever actually fails a class), and that's part of what has shifted the "proof of basic competency" from a high school degree to a college one.
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