I am surprised by how many people fundamentally misunderstand the authors point. Surely he knows that a well educated workforce is important for an economy.
However what the author is addressing is this naive belief that education almost exclusively can solve poverty problems. This is the idea which has been thrown around for years. Governments, economists etc have focused far too much on presenting statistics showing the benefits of education in general without any concern for what people actually learn or whether there is ever a potential for just spending too much time on education.
As someone who has believed for years we are over-educating our people in the west, I've generally felt a complete dismissal of this opinion. Education helps! End of discussion, is the feeling I sense.
If you care to look it is pretty clear that the education hysteria has gone off the rails. Jobs people could perfectly well do with high school education, now requires a bachelor. Suddenly a master is a requirement where usually a bachelors degree would be sufficient. We have come to believe learning only happens in school. That is where I think we are going wrong.
My mother is a journalist and never took more than high school education. Yet she is a very accomplished journalist which knows a lot about her field. Today it is next to impossible to become a journalist without having lots of education, often multiple degrees.
A software developer with a Bachlor and two years of work experience doesn't know less than a student fresh out of a Master program. They just know different stuff.
What the people need to get out of poverty is relevant skills for the economy, but that is not a game of making sure your country has ever higher percentages of college graduates. Switzerland is a case in point. It is a high tech economy with some of the lowest level of college education. How can this be? Because in Switzerland almost anything can be learned through vocational training programs. Massive amounts of learning is happening in a sophisticated private enterprise. That just doesn't show up on the kind of statistics politicians obsesses about.
We don't need more education. We need education far better aligned with the needs of the economy and private enterprise. We also need to make it accessible people at all rungs of society.
X number of years of education in the US is not going to help when so many schools in poor areas of America are exceptionally bad. There is no mystery to this. America is the only advance country where the bulk of education spending goes to the well of rather than the needy. This is through the American tradition requiring students to go to their school district and tying funding to property taxes as well as relying on substantial amounts of fundraising by parents.
It is a bit late to start handing out scholarships for poor but talented students when they reach college age. The damage has already been done. You got to start thinking education from the very first years.