Last time, I discussed the idea that Higher Education has become a division between “capital education” - education that gives the student a greater potential for profit directly in the field they studied, and “consumer education” - education that is enjoyed or consumed at the point of reception by the student and is not used in a directly applicable way to a career in that field.
Consumer education has become the dominant product in many universities - especially state-oriented ones which need to perpetuate this consumption in order to survive. State schools have less of an incentive to produce capital because a large part of their funding comes from non-voluntary sources - namely, the government itself which obtained its funds by force. They have less accountability to the “capital” world - which would demand applicable and marketable skills - and more accountability to the “consumption” world - that is the politicians, intellectuals, businesses and interest groups which provide the funding and regulations which allow the state-oriented schools to exist in their present form.
Examples of “Education Bubbles”
This is, in essence, the central planning of higher education and leads to gross mis-allocation of workers. It operates under the exact same principles as any other government intervetion - where the price system is abandoned in favour of planning. It is more problematic in some sectors than others.
For example, in the UK, the government is currently paying for the tuition of everyone who wants to be a doctor, dentist, nurse and many other healthcare specialities. This has led to massive amounts of qualified healthcare workers, but with an increasing healthcare shortages (due to the centrally planned NHS) many of these students wait months or years to get a job in their field (if they end up with a job).
This is the same with teaching. It is incredibly hard to get a teaching job in the UK - yet the government is not only paying for teacher training - they are actually paying a bursary to trainees on top of this!
Not only does reckless planning such as this lead to an increase in consumer education, but it diverts workers, technology research and students away from capital education. It creates “bubbles” (just like a housing or credit bubble) of workers with certain skills that are radically displaced compared to the number of jobs available.
For all of those medical and educational trainees, the burst probably looks something like this. They wait around for a job for a year (either working an unskilled job, maybe living off loans or money from family) and soon have to either get an unrelated unskilled job, or they have to go back to higher education and start all over, having wasted years of their life and possibly accumulated debt and bills in the meantime that must now be sunk.
The Big Picture
Even outside of these industry-specific bubbles, is the general “bubble” of higher education as a whole - where (again, politicians, interest groups and so on) are encouraging high school graduates to “go to college” even though many of these only have a vague idea about how an undergraduate degree might help them.
From my experience of going into college, it was a combination of several factors:
- a general idea that I would “make more money” just for having a bachelors - regardless of the field I entered
- status/vanity - it feels good and “superiour” for an educational institute to certify that you are a smart person
- consumption - I like education and I like learning in and of itself
- capital - I might like to go into the field some day, and a degree is a huge advantage
And when I graduated, nothing changed. I kept the same job, the same pay and nothing was different whatsoever. My friend Joe however, who got a degree in Computer Science, got a much better job after college and made about double what I did in my job. College gave him skills that he was able to harness and apply in the market. My education actually kept me out of marketable skills in my field (graphic design at the time) and if it weren’t for discipline at work and in my free time - I would have probably suffered for college, not benefited from it.
Obviously “consumer” undergraduate degrees can transfer into capital education later on, but this will require even more education, and most importantly, an acquisition of applicable writing, research and academic skills that will actually be used in the field. But even this is risky.
The fact of the matter is, a consumer education as an undergrad on its own may be enlightening and personally fulfilling (this is what consumption does by nature) but don’t expect it to add zeros to the pay check. In addition, the fact that “consumer” education exists is because profit-seeking, capital education is taking place, creating the surplus wealth which is where demand for consumer education comes from in the first place. Any movements to abolish, restrict or subvert capital education in favour of consumer education will actually take the arts, history, classics, philosophy and the like down with it.
That’s the line that is pitched to high school students. Get a college degree, earn more money. Only a bare handful of people warned me that some college degrees are useless. Most of the advice I got said to get a degree in whatever suited my fancy–that the important thing was getting a degree, not getting a degree that would translate into marketable job skills.
The real irony? I was told it didn’t matter if my chosen major would give me any useful job skills because most people don’t work in the same field as their degree anyway. They didn’t tell me that that’s because most degrees are useless.
Fortunately I ignored that advice and got a degree that landed me a decent job.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for education as personal betterment and not just for money-grubbing, but if you’re racking up huge student loans then your education had better land you a great job. Major in English only if you can afford it, because the degree sure won’t pay for itself.
When we talked to our kids about college, we never said it was so they could make more money and we most certainly DID say it doesn’t matter what you study. That’s because the idea is for an UNDERGRAD, there is huge life value in a liberal arts education to enlarge one’s point of view, among many other things. Another big point is that going to college helps you to grow up.
What one studies as a graduate student is what makes the person money in the real world, and often one can get into a graduate field that has little resemblance to one’s undergrad major. For instance, my son who studied physics and never had a biology class is now becoming a doctor, and the one who studied biology as an undergrad did a Master’s degree in international development. My daughter is the only one whose undergrad education directly turned into a job, and it took her three years past graduation to find full time work in her field. So yeah, it is true that most people don’t work in the field they study as an undergrad.
The field of Computer Science is possibly an exception due to the general explosion of computer life in the last 30-40 years. In fact, we’ve got kids coming out of our high school that go straight into decent paying computer jobs with no college at all–they do at least part of that computer certification stuff right in HS.
Colin, I don’t really follow all the economic model in your beef about education, but I’m a firm believer in a liberal arts education as a stepping stone to other things.
Thain,
I am not saying that a “consumer” education is not valuable. Of course it is valuable - but economically, it is generally not a value. A student who has an “enlarged point of view” but is stuck at McDonalds because their undergrad degree focussed on 19th century Latin American revolution and cost them $45,000 (which they now have to pay back over ten years) is probably going to be a bitter and resentful person. The three levels of bosses above them are probably complete idiots compared to them in terms of formal education, but the skills they need to get a good paycheck or get to a better career will have to be accumulated through experience and on the job training - thus they start out at the bottom - despite knowing everything about Simón Bolívar.
For some people it is a stepping stone to other things (a minority - and these need even more education). For most people it is a money pit that gets them in debt and stuck in dead-end jobs.
The only reason I am able to turn my undergrad degree into a PhD is because a) I have NO debt b) an employed spouse and c) the actual gumption (or idiocy) and (hopefully) the skill set to risk it.