Caplan: Subsidizing higher education in developing nations can destroy economic value
Bryan Caplan · a16z Podcast | The Case Against Education, From Signaling to Rainbow's End · Jan 2, 2019 · at 34:56
Bryan Caplan, economics professor at George Mason University, discusses how government employment guarantees for university graduates distort labor markets in developing countries.
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“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 that in order to be considered for most of these government jobs. So, I mean, that's, again, one of the worst cases where essentially the government said, if you get a college degree, we will hire you. You've got guaranteed employment. And the result is they greatly expand the education system and then just siphon off almost all the talent into these government jobs that Seem to add very little, or, you know, you might even go so far as to say that they are economically destructive, and they're just interfering with the development that would have happened without them.”
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