Robin Hanson says

We say we go to docs to get well, but why if those who go more aren’t more well? We say we study to get better jobs, but why if we won’t bother to study what jobs we should want to get?

My mind is still pondering how best to explain this. A few ideas come to mind, but none are that satisfactory yet. But what most strikes me is at the meta level – few of my academic colleagues seem nearly as bothered by such things as I. So many academics, including economists, study medicine and schooling, and yet they hardly even mention such obvious dramatic puzzles, much less devote themselves to resolving them.

I didn’t read the posts that inspired Robin’s post on this but ironically I was just thinking about this question this morning: why are so many people supportive of education.

I think Robin has a good story about Medicine. Not saying that its definitely right but it’s a story that recognizes the fundamental problems and more or less hangs together. That makes it a good start.

So, the natural thing to do is see if we can port that same story over to education. Do parents give their children education because they think it will help them or is education just a way for parents to tell their children they love them.

The helping them story is not utterly implausible because there do seem to be benefits associated with education. Even if you tell a story where education is just about proving that you smart and dedicated (the signaling hypothesis) its still beneficial for the individual family to provide education.

However, it does introduce lots of puzzles. If education is really about giving you the skills to get a good job then why isn’t education more vocationally focused.

If its all just a signal then why is our long drawn-out educational process not replaced by testing to see if you are smart and then a grueling internship to see if you have the work ethic to cut it. The military does this for enlisted soldiers and it seems to work well for them.

On the other hand the education as a sign of love hypothesis explains lots of things. It explains a focus on small class sizes. It explains a focus on prestige. It explains why spending on education would just go up as society got richer and why rising inequality would lead to exploding inequality in educational spending.

Notice that the share of spending devoted to education by the top quartile went up over the last decade.

Even if the share stayed constant the top quartile would be increasing its spending on education at a faster rate than everyone else, because spending at the top is rising faster.

However, that’s not end of the story.  The top quartile is spending a bigger fraction of their faster growing spending on education.

What the love hypothesis doesn’t explain is rising student debt. Why are the students themselves taking on ever larger burdens. Is it so they can prove that they love themselves? That’s not totally implausible, but out the gate it doesn’t seem very compelling.