Author
Bryan Caplan
1 reading card from 1 book · 2018.
1 card
The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money · 2018
The question is not what they like studying, but what they like doing eight hours a day.
Caplan is provocative and overstated, but his useful part holds: some of what an employer pays for is the signal, not the content. Four practical selection criteria follow, in the order worth applying them. One, transferability: how much of what you learn moves elsewhere if the field changes. Mathematics, statistics, writing, law, core engineering and languages move; a very narrow specialisation in one particular tool does not. Two, proof outside the diploma: a portfolio, projects, internships, a published paper, code that runs. In a market where everyone has a degree, what you can show makes the difference. Three, opportunity cost: three years at a university you do not attend is worth less than two years of work plus a certification, and that is truer in Romania than in many places. Four, the institution's signal counts, but less than people think and more at the first job than at the third. The concrete steps in the last two years of school: one, two internships however short, before the choice; two, conversations with three people who do the job, not with teachers who teach it; three, a written list of what they like doing eight hours a day, not what they like studying; four, an explicit plan B, because changing course after the first year is not a failure, it is expensive information used in time. What you do not do: you do not choose for them, you do not choose by today's average salary, and you do not treat a vocation declared at seventeen as a lifetime contract.
“A large share of a degree's value comes not from what you learned but from what it proves to an employer who does not know you: that you are intelligent, conscientious and willing to conform.”