What’s College Good For?

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What’s College Good For?
Introduction
In his essay titled “The World Might Be Better Off Without College for Everyone,” Bryan Caplan makes a case against the American education system by reiterating that it constitutes money and time wastage. The education system amount to a significant disconnect between “college curricula and the job market” as the subject matter is mostly irrelevant to the job market. Caplan also states that students do not retain knowledge. He equates students to “philistines,” implying that they are increasingly soulless materialists predominantly focusing on status and money. He also noted the issue of “credential inflation,” which leads to extensive worthless credentials. The compulsion to attend college constitutes a doctrine that drives people to downplay vocational training value. This paper presents the argument that college education fails to sufficiently prepare youths for the job market and benefits individuals more than the economy. It also incorporates the idea that innovation encourages innovation and charts a middle ground in the education system.
College Education is Useless
Caplan employs well-evidenced rationales as an effective strategy that support his argument concerning the significance of college education in the United States (US). He maintains his views concerning college education not being important in contemporary society since it fails to sufficiently prepare students for the job market and imparts unnecessary skills to the learners using extensive evidence. For example, he provides research findings of some studies conducted within American universities, which posited a negligible difference in reasoning and literacy between the final year and first-year college students. The results reiterated that college learners forget virtually everything they learned in college immediately after graduating. Further, Caplan offers an expert opinion concerning the deteriorating state of tertiary education in the US by evidence that the current generation’s students put more time and effort into their studies than the previous generation. In this vein, he observes that university students spend 27 hours studying instead of the typical learner's forty hours (Caplan). This opinion is centered on Caplan’s long-standing expertise and experience as an Economics professor at George Mason University. Therefore, this evidence strengthens and supports his arguments by offering relevant and current reliable and logical explanations considering that he has closely interacted with college students as a college professor and with the education sector for four decades.
Caplan creates an emotional appeal to his audience by employing assertion-laden language. He posited that “educational enriches individuals much more than it enriches nations” (Caplan). This claim resonated with many Americans who believed their nation’s economic performance was deteriorating while few persons were perceived to be benefiting at the expense of the masses. Additionally, many Americans felt that country’s college education failed to deliver general prosperity and social...