Monday, February 07, 2011

Egypt: Oversold Higher Education Boomerangs

George Leef blogs my Clarion Call article at Phi Beta Cons and NAS.
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My article gets linked by Cafe Hayek.

3 comments:

JWO said...

I often read or hear stories like that and I first think they must be teaching the wrong thing. If the answer to the question: "Would you rather have the degree or the knowledge and skill? " Is the degree then something is wrong.

There is much more to it than that but that is a start.

Troy Camplin said...

But suppose you have the knowledge and skill, and you still can't find a job. That's starting to happen in the U.S. with those with law degrees. There are many people with knowledge and skills who can't get a decent job, and plenty with degrees who do have jobs. So you are right that it is complex.

Anonymous said...

Troy,
I have found your article fascinating. Congratulations.

I too think that sustained and sound investment in human capital (education) comes after economic growth, not the other way around. However, investment in human capital may create some conditions for future better economic growth, although this comes at the expense of misallocation of resources and malinvestments. Some point out the case of Soviet education. Of course I don't think that was a success at all. I don't know to what extent the technical education they received were useful afterwards.

In order to clarify the relationship between education and growth in academia, shouldn't be enough pointing out historical evidence of countries now developed?