And figured if i dont write a book like this, who will. Host did you have an education experience that made you think like this . Guest if they can both be back in kindergarten sitting in class, teaching all these subjects and some of them i understood there were others like why do we have to learn this stuff and adults would say you need to learn this to get a good job. That seems true because all of you adults had to go through the hoops to get through where you are. I was always puzzled until i started reading more about why education pays and now i understand the answers mystery ive been wondering since kindergarten. Host big part focuses on the Human Capital so most of the audience might want to do with t that is. Before we get to the substance [inaudible] guest is basically the one teachers and parents tell you which is you go to school and the poor skillthey pour skills a result when you graduate you are a skillful person employers will want to give you a good job and pay you a good salary so you are transformed by the education, turned from an unskilled student into a skilled worker. The story is different from that. It says whats going on as they were jumping through a bunch of hoops that dont improve you as a worker for they are impressive. They convince them you are good and they certified you and put stickers on your forehead saying this is a ready worker. An analogy is to think about diamonds. Theres two ways to raise the value of the diamond. You get an expert gem cutter to him to get perfect and the other is to get a guy with a solution that says this is a perfect diamond. These are two different ways that can make it more valuable. First is like Human Capital transforming and making it better and a second one you are identifying and putting your seal of approval on it. Host its signaling the place to be degradations of education. You get a degree from harvard verses from a secondtier state college. Guest absolutely. Theres so many things that go with the signals. Theres coursework, the nature, what school they went to. Then of course there is many things you do to signal besides getting your education so just not getting tattoos on your face or a pretty good start. Host what part of signaling do you think how much of the education value is embedded in the signaling . Guest thats one of the main questions i try to address. Its Something Like 80 of the payoff comes from signaling. Im not marriei am not married. I consider other versions are ways of looking at it the way that i can do that is there is a lot of evidence i consider and they all point to a number in the ballpark one is looking at the curriculum seeing what fraction of students spend time on subjects you could plausibly never use in a job then you say more languages in the u. S. , how long do people even learned us to the level they can use it in the job and how many jobs require them, things like history, how many jobs like art music. Its for entertainment, but these requirements often and if you were to say i refused to go and dance something my kids were often tempted to say, the system doesnt allow you cant advance unless you complete these requirements. In the eisai i refused to do spanish because i dont see the value of it for me. If i said that i really could not have gone to the college i went to come in uc berkeleys. I wouldnt have felt the requirements and i couldnt be here today if i said im not going to do the subjects that dont feel valuable to me. Host 80 is signaling. Its a higher number than some others that have studied college in the labor market which is more around 30 to 50. Guest i would see even that is high. People that specialize in this debating economists one z. 20 maybe. Your number is pretty high specialist review. Host dot why do you have that high without going into the complex math. Host economists do this work and generally have zero interest in the curriculum. They dont Pay Attention to what people study. So much of what they want to do this only look at the income part and you cant understand what Human Capital is. You open up the black box and see what is in the curriculum and with subjects or people studying and when i talked to economists that are giving these lower numbers, look at the curriculum, so little of it seems to be relevant to the jobs people are likely to have the usual reaction is to say people were learning Critical Thinking which is interesting because they are the same ones that dont mind reading psychology either. I read a lot of psychology and check with psychologist is to make sure that i was fairly summarize it and here is the striking thing those that work on this are pessimistic and come away often shellshocked at what the evidence says. They look at pics like if we do a good job into students learn what they are taught at learning how to think that is such a moon shot to be able to do that but in the data it is hard to see it happening. Host so you put the level at 80 because youve looked at the other aspects in the learning process and say look, there are studies that indicate it isnt happening so you sort of estimate that at a higher level. Guest another thing i look at as there are many subjects are you going to test adults and they know next to nothing about them in history as a classic case, how many years do you have to study history just k12 and if you talk to adults and give them tests like this century was the american revolution, maybe half of them but some other things i did to come up with this number i also went and looked at work by sociologists where they see how much as the American Labor market changed terms of the jobs people do and in terms of the education you need to do one of the same jobs. They got numbers going back to at least 194 1940 and above thee. Most of the changes are not that weve switched to more intellectually demanding jobs. The changes you need three to four years to do the same job existed for man many decades agu need three more years to be a waiter or cashier or bartender or hotel concierge. Some say the job is more complicated than it used t to be and others it seems like it is less complicated. Overall the people who do this work generally dont think that theres been much of an overall change in the amount of training that you need to do one and the same job and the signaling story says this makes a lot of sense because thats the education levels have risen the amount to impress employers goes up almost in lockstep. Host i want to get into the whole idea of graduates working on this but the common story that you hear is people saying with, we need more of this education because it is the Service Economy that requires more personal interactions and allows for a more complex labor market and thats why you get the sort of extra training on top of it. Host guest they dguest co. They t generally find anything like that so its easy to find an example of a job where its important to deal with people and their struggles for its less important than ever. You think about all the people now that work behind a computer and barely ever talk to anyone. At the other thing is one of the main things we are not teaching in schools you can say you still get something. I agree but compared to what. So it is great but what is the relevant alternative of those around the world and throughout history having a job. You can pick up a lot of interpersonal skills on the job. As i talked about in the book theres a lot of similarities which is why you can say they are preparing people for work, theres a lot of important differences, so like in school especially nowadays every child and every one is important and being very negative and steering feedback. On the job on the other hand you get a lot of negative feedback and people tell you youre not measuring up heres what you need to do and in terms of preparing people for adult life is better preparation for work and school because you are learning somthey werelearning sl things as well as functional. Host so if you are saying 80 of the value is the signaling part and the learning is sort of minimal, what is applied in that is your coming to the college or high school with this innate knowledge that you already have isnt tha it kd of implication . Guest the main thing i say is most people know how to read and write but you show up phenomenally ignorant and then you finally learn. Its to make people jump through hoops for over a decade and finally you get a job that has nothing to do with your major or anything else and they say now that you are able to learn all these other things weve will teach you something that is going to be useful. I would be more inclined to say people dont learn very much order retain very much which is an important distinction. I spen spend time looking at sts of apple and the motivation is the Human Capital is right and they are paying for your skills that would make they would pay you for the skills you have now. Why would they pay you for stuff you knew ten years ago that doesnt make anything. So once you accept this idea that retention is the relevant thing to measure them on the time of the final exam in it still doesnt explain what happens later because people forget things so quickly. You think about all the classes where you dont remember much of anything. Host so the learning might happen but they dont maintain and host a lot of times it wont happen but theres the problem even if they did learn if it isnt relevant to the jobs in the future and theres a final problem for the time you are relevant you would have forgotten it. You teach them abstract knowledge of and then see into people have trouble disconnecting the two things that host some people would hear what youre saying and im not trying to harp on the signaling issue that people would hear what you are saying and by saying most of the value is signaling intelligence and work ethics and conformity they have the tools already or the ability and to go through this maze and then they could employ it as a reward me for what i already have. Guest it does add up to something. 20 of the big thing is still a pretty big thing and the other is of course during school there is natural maturation that doesnt mean you could have done the crenshaw that 15. They were a different person at 15 to time is passing but i am saying the job you get after graduation most employers would have been not willing to even interview you because you need to do the signaling to convince them you are worthy enough not to be thrown away before you even get to the interview stage. Host before we get to the issue of these nonrelevant its the employers themselves asking for the signal. Guest if everyone had 1 degree of less we could send a signal effectively. You will see there is a classic analogy you are all sitting down and the answer is stepped up. In the signaling story this is what education is about, employers will be more interested in getting a better job and if everybody does that, the result is just we block each other and we need more education to get a job where intrinsically you could say why do i need college it doesnt make sense but there is also one of people with degrees that are qualified as well. Why not go and call the people and interview. In terms of why an, if they were lower than they couldnt afford with the economy. The point i make in the past we only hire waiters with College Degrees than there will be a restaurant without waiters were paying a massive amount. Nowadays it is totally feasible to be that picky because there are so many applicants will have those credentials. Host ive spent the past year looking at the path from college to work talking about the companies that they want of students. They will say w both say we absd people with bachelors degrees. Guest to rent cars. Host or to sell or move up in management. The question i have is what is driving this, clearly the businesses are asking for this at some level. But what is driving it up, it suggests taking up a box is wanting to stand on them at the theater with his saying we need something to filter the applicants and they want something that can show the ability before we can consider you. Host is that theres about a trillion dollars of funding on all levels so its worth keeping that in mind and we have a successful Education System people think of as purely good. In th the book i say there is a dark side to the accessibility and it may just be to end up in the same place he would have ended up with a lowerlevel accessibility. They are not thinking about all the other kids from the neighborhood who dont like school and have opportunities taken away from them because employers say their are so many people with College Degrees why should we give the chance to someone else who hasnt gone through the same hoops so thats part of it. Another thing is there is a general shift towards the high statements against not being welleducated so we have parents and teachers working together the funding and attitudes. Funding is the simplest thing to do something about. And then the Richer Society people are not as interested in having their kids work at a younger age. Host you know what ive heard talking to College Administrators people seem to not want to hire High Schoolers anymore because they are working stheyre workingso hard on their college that they are not going out tnow to get a job at a pizza place or places like when i was a kid. Host they make the mistake because you do seem to pick up some useful job skills from getting a job. One of the main things i say is for all the kids who get regular school so its easy to forget people like this exist but theres tons of people that detest the experience and its not because they dont have the right teachers, but they like doing things like this so Vocational Education because it gives the alternative but on top of it from the taxpayers point of view it makes a lot less sense to learn the skills to jump through the hoops for the society it means more people thahave things they were able to and accomplish whereas putting more stickers on their forehead it is a futile arms race. Host there was a study recently that said students who took the courses in school were much more likely to graduate from high school and to matriculate in college so it bumps up the relevancy of what they are learning in many ways. Going back 40 or 50 years there was a dark side in the sense that it was kids from poor backgrounds were much more likely to be tracked in the system then into the college prep system. If you are advocating for more opportunities or efforts to the sort of practical learning how is that a dark side danger to this . Guest based upon the picket actually likes and is good at it makes perfect sense to come up with a fairminded way of doing that. A big fan of testing for doing Something Like that rather than having you, you and knew i declare you need to do Vocational Education today. Its under so much scrutiny they try to validate to see what it is we think they should predict. You talk to people that do this for a living and its impressive how far theyve come to. Its important to do the race between the options. People dont like to think of the dark side of the system that we have that there is an enormous dark side which is a genuine cultural mentality that this is actually inculcated in the students across the entire k12 system and as a result you have a lot of kids that did poorly in high school who still go to college and then very predictably fail. So much comes from graduation and a basically saying theres a dark side once in a while somebody wins. The odds of success are low. Host is there a problem with a using College Degrees to filter the applicants the class or by race, is that possible . Possible . Guest co. My genuine review if they want to make money and to get others especially today it could very well be you would end up getting these but if i dont think that they are givin doing it just tod have a social class they are there to make money. You would make money by replacing College Workers with nonCollege Workers. If you were to say that manage the business and offer the pages but only hire people that didnt go to college and get the best defense pathway. It seems like a model that would be surprising if it were successful. Host but he took up a sort of irrelevant courses were talking about before history, drama and so on. People might say there are tens of thousands of people who might get the numbers wrong but some study history theres only a few thousand but first of all you can study history and it can still be opened even if youre not a historian. My uncle is the dean of college and used to teach military history as a part of the business course in the study with the generals did in order to run what was successful and what wasnt. Furthermore, when people enter college, they need i the signal, lets assume the signaling factor that you have is right so they want to study something that is at least interesting to them. Whats wrong with studying history . Guest i think that is so much that there is something wrong with subsidizing the studies people are not able to use in the future and we dont know with certainty that i know quite a few screens if you were to ask how likely is it the students are going to go and use these in the long historical jobs, of course it is highly unlikely. So, in High School History sometimes the teacher would say you are going to see how relevant this is but its hard especially coming at with a decent amount of history its hard to come up with a historical analysis of the eye would be inclined to tell them into the good news is you are still signaling employers so they are still going to treat you better than if you didnt go to college at all to a question in the book is does it make sense to subsidize this kind of thing and for the taxpayers to encourage this rat race where people spend many years of their life to end up at a job he could have done just as well earlier on a. Thats something where if that were true in at least a worthwhile argument would you pay for them for four years so they can pursue a. A. But at the same time unless you are taking it would be easy but people seem to have less interest in taking a spare cla class. Not a student at all in general just to go to a college and start attending college if they were officially enrolled in and take a look at the entrance to see how much there are a lot of great educational videos on youtube its people that want to make the case by preserving the status quo. They are at least introduced to it something might mature into them over time. Theres two ways to go into the public policy. If you were to say history is a great subject it does the actual teaching of history as we know it and this is where i say you have to know what the actual adults say about history and it doesnt seem to work or on average of course there are rare exceptions but how much effort do we want to put in i also know people study the subjects despite the because it was so poorly taught. There was ptsd and i just cant bear the thought of it. Theres very few of them that would become the tom cruise. The skills you learn over improvisation reacting to other peoples emotions and learning to stand in front of a crowd. If applied well youre not going to be the next tom cruise, maybe. But there are other ways you confuse this in life. Guest totally possible but does it have been. They were more likely than anybody else. It wouldnt shock me. Even though some schools seem like they ought to generalize it seems like getting the better presentation of a business meeting. When you think two things should be tied together they generally are not. Because we could imagine a noticeable improvement of the skills that would be the Wishful Thinking and not just. This is the kind of book where all of the research myself i would have taken to write the book. What i did was lets go and find all the people and find out what they say about it. I try to Read Everything i can. People are generally very good at writing back and when we were talking about this the research comes out which shows the clergy. People really want what you are saying to be true. They are desperate. Everybody else that studies this it must be that they have missed something and at the end of your shellshocked and it seems hard to teach general skills. It has to be very specific and hands on. They did and enormous amounts of practice in these specific things that they were doing. Host you talk to employers these days to go back to the liberal arts for a moment, a writer for forbes has a booklet you can do anything and theres a number of employers that you talk to that say we are interested in hiring people for the study of the other because it makes them sort of creative thinkers and if some sort of a cultural awareness. What about that if employers are asking about this. Host it can signal all these things which is the heart of the book. If you enter the data they make quite a bit more money its worth keeping in mind there is a basis for the into to greatly elevated risks of the ide risk t the liberal arts or completely worthless as long and employers will not consider you is wrong but there is a penalty labor market. When i was a kid my dad [inaudible] when i was able to do this kind of amusing to them what is this thing hed never even heard of it. There is no major out there that doesnt prove them as long as you finish the degree that they are not all created equal and its in terms of how well they do for you. Most would agree with that. I dont think it is a controversial point. I could have gotten a higher paid job. And working in journalism is more filling toomey. Host i think my dad wanted me to be a salesman. What are the solutions to this . Where do you begin with all this . An idea that is so unpopular if you like if i dont do it, who will. Even if people get upset about that because they are always thinking about the talented kids and you need to think about broad social effects wouldnt cut be better for almost everybody if you finished high school, great, heres more that you have to do it by making it so successful weve created a world where we increase the number of stairs you have to climb a to get a job where they will give you some real training about it. Host i am open to all kinds of austerity. There is one such reducing the subsidy of student loans. The problem is tuition needs to be higher. How does this make it more affordable for the students . To discourage people from getting a degree that is fostering this race. I am selfaware and i know it is not a popular view. I couldnt find a single country on earth with more than 10 of the population in the cuttingedge spending but that is what i say all be done. We also talked abou talk about e requirements especially so here is one where theres almost no support why is it required that you go and do this just to get a High School Degree first of all no one learns this in school anyway after two or three years so i did manage to piece together the data. Ive spent time in the Foreign Languages but its entertainment for most people that do it. Most people find it a big drag so why is it every Single Person has to do it. Of course now a lot of people do just to get into college. The state legislature could simultaneously say all of the schools are getting rid of the Foreign Language requirements or they could get the computer language instead of seems like a good reformist measure. So you synchronize the high school and College State level in order to try to move people to a better result. I talk about a lot of other reforms like that as well. Host under this program but youre talking about if you shift the cost of education from the state to the individual, within that exacerbate the Socioeconomic Division between people . You would have to assume the signal would still exist but the rich would get plenty of tries to get the signal and the poor might not even get one. Guest they cant afford to hire only rich kids, theres too many jobs. So the key result of this is going to be it changes how much education do you need in order to get a job in the first place and its the second part that is so hard for people to buy. What else could happen if you go back its clear theres a lot of jobs very few people. It didnt say anything as bad about you. Whether you have that degree and very little formal education so with the system has done is created some difficult opportunities that also destroyed a lot of other opportunities we sort of taken for granted that theyve done but they dont have to go away. Host told me about how that would shake out and what you would have people study. Host Vocational Education seems to be the most promising. Students are not doing enough Vocational Education and the students right now but hate school so much it seems a lot better for them. In terms of the kind of things one of the referees said the step one is take a look at the jobs right now what is happening in the world today. Its not reflected a. That would be great if they were things that could possibly work out but most of the subjects they study in school are dead ends. I could become a poet or a professional athlete. These were all fields where a te number of jobs is very small so it would be better to give a plausible option but right now we have an enormous amount of jobs and healthcare so lets see how they feel about that. Step one is looking at the forecasting. Yes, this is hard but if we knew anything about the future there will be a lot of Jobs Available to us in the future. This isnt a flaw to the plausible forecast so its better to make your best guess than to just deliberately ignore all the facts. There are those like switzerland and germany and one of the up to get things about them is the underclass is so much smaller that if the system would drop out of school in germany or switzerland if you drop out they say what you like to become an auto worker and they have a lot of people for whom this is appealing. The fact that they are not likely to to talk about what its like, there are not a lot of people that clearly are. Host i looked into the vocational systems before and talked to experts on this and one of the issues is in some ways the countries are more homogenous then we are so according to the system where college is seen as an aspirational goal. Guest first is to get rid of thiof the stigma even if yout change anything else just to go from tender garden and on dont just say we really need it and expose people to vote. Host ive done some reporting in washington where they are trying to push for a opportunities to. There are Racial Disparities in the graduations and college graduation, shocking and hire lowpaid majors. It would be amazing if there werent. Figuring out what are going to be effective and remembering that its considering not only the best Case Scenario for the likely scenario. For them to have any kind of productive employment than to say compared to what. Host they come to the class. Is this a somewhat unsurprising in the highstakes testing it seems perfect may be what we need to do is change the Orientation School and say they can be interesting. There is no highstakes associated with just need you to learn and discover some of these things. They start way earlier than that. I could imagine making a radically different and that also people would consider school anymore because its honestly wouldnt it be better to have three hours of literacy and then the rest at the library. If there were no school like that that is where i would send my younger kids two and employers dont know they did this, so it is important you got to learn it even if you dont like it. I dont see any big justification for it. Why could we change it this is the ethos at the middl of middld high school where i come from and there was a lot of emphasis on Group Projects there are some people who enjoy that more than if they enjoyed their work. Like why is it that i cant do this, so in terms of coming up with a system like this that is just generally enjoyable look at what they do after graduation and how many are watching Food Network Fan are watching it speaks to something rooted in the human nature and some are not. Im the kind of person that finds fascinating stuff. Please when i was a kid i just kept thinking and i did explain it to people the right way and theif they would agree with me t eventually i would say no theres no need to explain it to most people that would make it enjoyable to them you can find a few people and say there theree to this than meets the eye. Host maybe we have beaten the love of the topics by testing them all the time and maybe we need more teachers say the as a teacher of economics maybe its to be more relevant and engaging. Pull back on some of these tests and bureaucratic requirements and let the love of teaching go. Guest he writes a piece like im supposedly one of the best teachers and you are not interested in what i have to say that there is a point where it is so extreme and it doesnt seem like the students care about it. More than likely a trick to teach to those that do care. My teaching evaluations are very high. Im just not good enough to get them to come to class have the time. Host we talked about how does the same with people over time. But there are people that have made economics very sexy. People are introduced to the topics and then they followed a. Guest they are so small compared to the pop culture stuff but if youre thinking how much do people actually learn and give them a new economics problem that could be solved in general it is pretty disposable and also they have an Online University and when they first put out their class to resolve this interest than they offered an intern. What are other people doing . A lot to doublecheck whether they understood anything. If you want them to learn it it is unlikely are you voting it well or not. Just to tell someone you understand this right while actually you dont and we need to go back and learn it. So giving people some candid feedback as i followed it or not and then you go back and try again because there is the illusion of learning which is a very different thing. Host i think people are attached to the idea because they think we will turn into a theocracy if we dont support this stuff. You did when that debate but i think in the end there was still the majority so this is a tough argument to make. Host i dont write a book defending this because the popular views dont need my help. There is always going to be plenty of people. Im going to make you strong and this is what i do in all of my books. Thats what motivates me to go and write something and it seems wrong, but maybe im wrong to try to weed out the enormous amount of material, like what has anybody said about this and how do they make sense of it. Good evening everybody welcome to politics and prose our new Live Streaming service i am one of the, owners along with my husband and on behalf of our entire staff we welcome you to tonights event which we all have been so excited about and im sure you all are two. Let me say a few housekeeping things in the beginning. 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