When he argues that education is largely wasteful signaling, Bryan Caplan notes (in The Case Against Education), most listeners yield:
Popular resistance doesn’t kick in until I add, “Let’s waste less by cutting government spending on education.”
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The typical reaction is to confidently state, “Education budgets should be redirected, not reduced.”
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Prudence dictates a two-step response. Step 1: Stop wasting the resources. Step 2: Save those resources until you discover a good way to spend them. Not wasting resources is simple and speedy. Don’t just stand there; do it. Finding good ways to use resources is complex and slow. Don’t just do it; think it through. Remember: you can apply saved resources anywhere. Time and money wasted on education could pave roads, cure cancer, cut taxes, subsidize childbearing, pay down government debt before our Fiscal Day of Reckoning, or allow taxpayers to buy better homes, cars, meals, and vacations.
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The signaling model highlights two desirable forms of educational austerity. The first: cutting fat from the curriculum. The second: cutting subsidies for tuition.
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Anyone who scrutinizes modern schools with a mildly cynical eye witnesses piles of material students are laughably unlikely to use in adulthood. The fat emerges in kindergarten: history, social studies, art, music, foreign language. By high school, as we’ve seen, students spend at least half their time on fat. In college, many majors are made of fat: think history, communications, or “interdisciplinary studies.” About 40% of graduates earn degrees in comically—or tragicomically—useless subjects. Even the hardest majors burn ample time on high theory and breadth requirements.
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Return the hours we seize from the young at great taxpayer expense. When they’re too little to release on their own recognizance, schools can still save a bundle by giving students more active time on the playground or more quiet time in the library. Once they no longer need babysitting, society can save even more by ending the school day the minute useful learning is done.
A moderate reform is to stop requiring useless coursework. Make history, social studies, art, music, and foreign language optional. The main problem with this moderation: pursuing material you’re allowed to skip sends a favorable signal. Many students—urged on by their parents—will leap to outshine their peers. To defuse this wasteful arms race, we must do more than make armaments optional. We must constrain opportunities for combat.
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The cleanest approach, naturally, is to discontinue classes that teach impractical material at taxpayer expense. There really is no need for K–12 to teach history, social studies, art, music, or foreign languages. This is especially clear if you recall how much students forget: despite years of schoolwork, American adults can’t date the Civil War, name their congressman, draw, sing, or speak French.
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Why should taxpayers fund the option to study fine arts at public expense? Instead, shut down the impractical departments at public colleges, and make impractical majors at private colleges ineligible for government grants and loans. Deprived of impractical options, some students will switch to practical subjects.
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As fat disappears from the curriculum, students will inevitably find other ways to signal excellence to the labor market. Does this make curriculum reform self-defeating? No, because some forms of signaling are less socially wasteful than others.
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Raise tuition for public colleges. Cut subsidies. Turn grants into loans. Charge borrowers market interest rates. Impose at least some tuition for public high school. From a normal perspective, such proposals provoke the horrified reaction, “Attendance could fall!” From a signaling perspective, the right response is, “Lower attendance is what we’re going for.”
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The more attendance falls, the scarcer educated labor becomes, and the pricier it gets. Owing to signaling, the social benefit rises less than the selfish benefit, but social and selfish benefits still move in tandem. At some point, the education premium gets high enough to transform the marginal student into a good social investment.
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If we’re not getting good value for our educational investments, we shouldn’t call deep cuts “draconian.” We should call the status quo “profligate.”
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The trillions we spend boring youths might cure cancer, buy driverless cars, or end world hunger. Collective complacency seems harmless, but it kills by omission.
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Contrary to populists, student loan programs are one of the least dysfunctional parts of the status quo. Subsidized loans definitely encourage college attendance, but subsidies are too low to encourage it much. Compared to overall taxpayer support for education, loan programs are a rounding error—in part, no doubt, because student debt survives bankruptcy.