Does the “Paper Chase” pay off, rewarding most college students with a large lifetime earnings premium?

“I was recently in a debate at the National Press Club on the subject of the economics of expanding higher education. Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder and I argued against the idea that American economic strength will wane unless we manage to get more young people through college. You can watch the debate here. In total, it’s about an hour and a half, but I’ll summarize our demolition of the affirmative case for those of you who don’t have time for the whole thing.

First, we showed that the U.S. already has a large surplus of college graduates, many of them employed in jobs that don’t call for any academic training whatsoever. (I have little use for most federal statistics, but here the data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is very enlightening.)

We showed that for most people, there is very little connection between college coursework and the knowledge and skills needed for their jobs.

We showed that because we have so over-expanded higher education over the years, we have driven academic standards down to the point where many students enter college with weak skills and often graduate with no improvement in them.

We showed that the “earnings premium” argument is fallacious because the higher average earnings of people who have earned college degrees in the past is no guarantee that anyone who now earns a degree will have the same results. In fact, it’s clear that many graduates are not enjoying that earnings premium. They aren’t paid any more for working as, for example, a theater usher just because they have a college diploma hanging on the wall.

We showed that the reason why many jobs now “require” a college degree is that employers use educational credentials as a screening device. Often, they make possession of a BA mandatory for applicants, no matter what the person studied and no matter how simple the intellectual demands of the work. Furthermore, if we push increasing numbers of people through college, that will ratchet up the credential inflation, thus blocking off people who don’t have degrees from more jobs they could easily do.

Finally, we showed that it’s erroneous to equate years of formal education and degrees earned with being “better educated.” Much of what people learn in life is not learned in a classroom setting.

The affirmative side’s comeback to our arguments? Nothing. Both debaters ignored them and, unfortunately, the moderator didn’t ask them to respond.

In my opinion, it’s plain as day that even if we managed to increase the number of students we persuade to enroll in college— which won’t be easy precisely because many who now don’t probably understand that the costs are high and the benefits low — the nation’s economy won’t be improved. Reaching the president’s goal of having the higher percentage of college graduates won’t make the American workforce “the best.” It will only mean that some more of our workers will have spent a lot of time and money to obtain the college credential before starting work in a job they could have done anyway.”