Opinion
Caplan: Schools should replace credentialed teachers with enthusiastic young non-graduates
“So, basically, it seems like we'd go and replace a lot of teachers from, you know, better schools, and with master's degrees, and with more experience, with just enthusiastic, fun, young teachers. You know, maybe people haven't even finished high school.”
Opinion
Caplan: The ideal educational model is complete separation of school and state
“I think the best would be separation of school and state. And just get government out of education entirely.”
Insight
Caplan: Schooling signals worker capability rather than teaching practical skills
“Well, if you go and do well in your Aristotle class, your foreign language class, this, though useless in terms of what you will do, it is impressive. It is convincing. It's a way of selling people on your value as a worker.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Caplan: Average adult knowledge of core school subjects is near zero
“I've got data on knowledge of history, government, science, and foreign languages, in addition to literacy and numeracy. Literacy and numeracy, at least there's a credible story, but the other things that I just mentioned, there if you go and look at what adul…”
Assertion Partly supported
Caplan: Teaching students "how to learn" is mostly wishful thinking
“In the book I review what educational psychologists have determined about this, and the main result is that most of this learning how to learn or learning how to think stuff is wishful thinking. Most of the time when someone learns a subject, the most that the…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Caplan: Increasing school choice does not significantly raise student test scores
“I've looked at least some of the research, and it seems like the idea that if there's a lot more school choice, this will raise test scores a lot, ah, doesn't seem to be true.”
Assertion Supported
Caplan: Standard credentials and seniority do not predict actual teacher effectiveness
“The main thing known is none of, like, the obvious social science measures of teacher quality predict teacher quality. So, having credentials from better schools, or having more credentials, or even more experience, none of the standard things that are in the …”
Opinion
Caplan: The existing education system ignores research on effective teaching methods
“The striking thing is that the existing system has almost no interest in this research.”
Insight
Caplan: Education's signaling function removes pressure to improve genuine student learning
“The signaling function of education is on an emotional level, at least very deeply grasped, and so there's almost no pressure from anyone in the system to actually improve genuine learning.”
Opinion
Caplan: Cut public education budgets by one-third and fund vocational training
“The system where they cut overall spending by a third, and then reallocate, say, half of the money that we currently spend in junior and high school to vocational education. That seems like a very, very reasonable revision.”
Opinion
Caplan: Subsidizing higher education in developing nations can destroy economic value
“And normally when third world countries spend a lot of money on tertiary education, often you, like, you wind up getting something more like the Egyptian result, where I think the government employs like 80% of college graduates. And of course, and you need th…”
Assertion Supported
Caplan: 1971 Griggs ruling restricts degree-based hiring as much as IQ tests
“If you look at the original case, it actually said that not only is IQ testing legally suspect, but educational credential hiring legally suspect.”
Insight
Caplan: Broad educational attainment simply inflates employer hiring requirements
“There is this treadmill or rat race effect where for any one individual that would give them more opportunities, and that's true, but if you go and give a whole generation more opportunities, the result is just that employers jack up the educational expectatio…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Caplan: Pushing every American kid toward college fails two-thirds of students
“And the current one where we try to keep virtually every American kid on the college track is one that doesn't work out for about two thirds of kids.”
Insight
Caplan: Educational signaling explains why students cheat to impersonate high achievers
“Signaling explains why students cheat. And I'm like, yeah, of course, but it never occurred to me until you told me, yeah, the whole point, you know, you cheat in order to impersonate a good student, so you want to be treated like an A student even though you'…”
Assertion Supported
Caplan: National education spending boosts GDP far less than personal earnings
“The main result is that the measured effect of national education on national income is much smaller than the effect of personal education on personal income, which fits very nicely with the signaling story and does not fit really with any other story out ther…”
Insight
Caplan: Voters avoid direct mistake costs, unlike consumers who shop
“There's a fundamental difference between shopping and voting. When shopping, if you make a mistake, you pay the price. Where in voting, if you make a mistake, you were just tipping the scales a little bit towards all of society having a worse outcome.”
Insight
Caplan: Democracy is a shared water pool used simultaneously as trash disposal
“Rather than thinking about democracy as a supermarket, think of it more about as like a common pool of water that is also our trash disposal system. And so people simultaneously are throwing in all of our intellectual garbage, but it's also where we drink.”
Insight
Caplan: Education advances individuals but creates no net value for society
“Looking better than other people is a great way to advance yourself, but it is not a way for society to advance.”
Assertion Supported
Caplan: People fail to apply knowledge across subjects without explicit prompting
“People are very bad at applying what they've learned. Especially without external prompting, so there's a lot of experimental evidence where you'll teach, for example, either math and science or science and math, and you'll sort of randomly assign which order …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Caplan: Education credentials drive labor market rewards independent of actual learning
“Even after you throw the whole kitchen sink in, every possible adjustment anyone's ever thought of, There still seems to be this lingering and substantial labor market reward of education that is unexplained by anything other than you've got the credential.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Caplan: Intelligence tests predict labor market success far better than personality tests
“Intelligence tests are, you know, quite predictive, but personality tests, at least for labor market outcomes, don't seem all that predictive”
Insight
Caplan: Parents prioritize college admissions and emotional fit over standardized test scores
“Parents aren't that concerned about getting their kids test scores up. So they may want them to have high SAT scores, but in terms of state standardized tests, most parents don't care about that stuff very much. And instead, they're mainly concerned about gett…”
Insight
Caplan: Rising general education levels intensify social stigma against non-degree holders
“In terms of competitiveness, there's much better in 1950 to be a high school dropout because in those days there were so many high school dropouts that there just wasn't that much of a stigma against it. And the reason is precisely that the higher the educatio…”
Bryan Caplan