Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Does Education Really Make You Smarter?

An intriguing piece by Norman Nie and Saar Golde:
Public debate has been dominated by the belief that education builds human capital, causing increased income, health and political participation, among many positive outcomes. But new research suggests that costly expansions of education may not always bring the promised social results. In some cases, those expansions may do little but sort people according to their native ability.
Read the whole thing.

So does this mean I've wasted the last three years in school?

(HT Andrew Gillen)

1 comment:

jeremy h. said...

No, it means your time in school (and everyone else's) may be socially wasteful. Individually it is not wasteful, unless you could find a cheaper way to send signals to employers.