Courtesy of Brian Caplan: >Bill Dickens versus the Signaling Model of Education: I take it that you think that nearly all of the value of schooling is signaling? I used to take that view too, but the accumulation of evidence that I've seen leads me to believe that isn't the case. >For one thing I find it very hard to believe that we would waste so many resources on a nearly unproductive enterprise. There are plenty of entrepreneurs out there trying to make money by selling cheaper, in time and money, versions of Education and they aren't very successful. Mainstream schools have experimented with programmed learning, lectures on video, self-paced learning, etc. and none of the methods have caught on. Why wouldn't they if they worked? >Of course its hard to believe that reading novels and poems contributes much to ones productivity on the job. So how do I square curriculum content with my view that Education is productive? Here goes: >1. Education isn't mainly about learning specific subject matter. Rather Education is mainly about practicing the sort of self-discipline that is necessary to be productive in a modern work environment. High school allows you to practice showing up on time and doing what you are told. College allows you to practice and work out techniques that work for you that allow you to take on and complete on time complicated multi-part tasks in an environment where you have considerable freedom about how you spend your time. Some people may be more talented than others at this sort of thing (you come to mind as someone who is particularly talented at self-discipline), but this is also an acquired skill that one can develop with practice, and everyone needs to develop certain work habits that make one more productive at both types of tasks. >2. Education is a consumption good. This should be self explanatory. At the margin school may be work, but infra-marginally at least some (if not most) people actually enjoy the reading, the lectures, the homework, etc. >3. Education is not just investment in work capital, its also an investment in consumption capital and social capital. I feel much more at home in the world due to the fact I understand certain cultural references. For example I know what someone means when they refer to someone else as a Prufrock. I also understand what someone is saying about a character in a music video if their costume invokes the evil robot Maria from Metropolis. I learned those things in college. The shared culture produced by the Education experience expands our common language with a lot of meaning, and that produces huge network externalities. Knowing history does help me do my job, but it is much more important that it allows me to make analogies that will be understood by acquaintances. What good does it do to talk about Vietnam Syndrome with those who didn't live through that era if they don't know anything about the Vietnam war and...