BOOK REVIEW: The Case Against Education’ by Bryan Caplan

OPINION:

THE CASE AGAINST EDUCATION: WHY THE EDUCATION SYSTEM IS A WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY

By Bryan Caplan

Princeton, $29.95, 395 pages

As befits a professor of economics at George Mason University, Bryan Caplan’s writing style is economical. Rather than beating about the bush, he sums up his conclusion in a short, stark sentence in his preface: “Socially speaking, this book argues that our education system is a big waste of time.” As far as Mr. Caplan is concerned, the educational emperor has no clothes.

I couldn’t agree more, but I may be a bit prejudiced. As an entering freshman with a full academic scholarship at George Washington University, standing in a seemingly endless registration queue in the early 1960s, it occurred to me that while some things in life are worth waiting in line for, a college degree probably wasn’t one of them. I deposited my paperwork in the nearest trash bin and left to take in a movie.

Whether it was fate or simply blind luck, the movie playing at the old Circle Theater that afternoon was “The Leopard,” Luchino Visconti’s brilliant adaptation of the eponymous novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.

Even in its badly cut, poorly dubbed English version, the film made a lasting impression on me: A vivid depiction of the struggle for individual integrity in a decadent society in flux, in this case Sicily during the Italian Risorgimento that, in the name of progress, managed to combine much of what was worse in both the old and new orders.

If I hadn’t been so turned off by the drabness and tedious regimentation of opening day at GWU, I might never have discovered “The Leopard.” Worse still, I might have wasted four years of my life in undergraduate school drudgery. Instead, I became a copy boy, spending most of my earnings on beer and books and, within a few years, had absorbed enough good writing and learned enough about the process itself to start building a writing career of my own.

In the 1980s when Nancy Reagan had launched her anti-drug crusade with a widely quoted slogan, I adapted it for the title of an article in Bob Tyrrell’s American Spectator: “Just Say No to Higher Education.” Much to my amusement, it was later reprinted in at least one journal of higher learning.

Unlike me, Bryan Caplan sweated out his first registration line and earned academic and professional distinction as an economist.

But the value of his work is founded on his practical, real-life evaluation of data rather than on widely accepted educational dogma. “I consciously place extra weight on basic statistics over high-tech alternatives,” he explains. “High-tech statistics can improve on basic methods, but the cost is high: To fix the flaws you understand, you usually have to introduce new flaws you don’t understand.”

In 290 pages of text and graphics, supplemented by 105 pages of notes, references and index, Mr. Caplan delivers a tightly knit, compelling indictment of the vastly inflated, scandalously over-priced and often socially deleterious Ponzi scheme that American higher education has become.

There is a solution but, since it is one that goes against the interests of professional educators and academic bureaucrats, it may never be applied.

When I graduated from high school in the early 1960s, I and all of my classmates at a modestly priced local prep school had already been given a sound foundation in one classic language (Latin) and one modern language (French or Spanish), algebra and geometry, and biology or geology.

We had also been taught American history and civics and one semester each of ancient/medieval and modern history. Our English teachers had grounded us in grammar and spelling and exposed us to timeless classics. Practical business courses were also available. All of this was done in classes of 30 students or more where order was maintained.

A few of us got As and a few of us got Fs; almost all of us graduated literate, and with at least an introductory exposure to the full spectrum of academic disciplines. While most of my classmates went on to college (with drastically varying results), what I had already absorbed at Woodward Prep — and in a civilized family circle — allowed me to take things from there without having to doze through four years of undergraduate drudgery and extended, subsidized, self-indulgent adolescence.

The key to delivering a useful education to the next generation of Americans is not cramming more and more of the less and less qualified into college. It lies in restoring the quality of primary and secondary education — including modern updates of vocational and apprenticeship programs, which Mr. Caplan appropriately emphasizes — that will produce young adults equipped to make their own way in life.

• Aram Bakshian Jr., an aide to Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, writes widely on politics, history, gastronomy and the arts.