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No one cared about my spreadsheets

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Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#251

Post by cycomanic »

nickff wrote: post #54
Brian_K_White wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because any attempt to even reduce the topic to a spreadsheet is a case of "not even wrong". When someone says that they proved that say, studying art doesn't matter, with math, you don't bother arguing with their math.

> "Probably because any attempt to even reduce the topic to a spreadsheet is a case of "not even wrong"." But he didn't reduce it to a spreadsheet, he wrote a very thorough book. > "When someone says that they proved that say, studying art doesn't matter, with math, you don't bother arguing with their math." I am not sure what you think Caplan says. His book is mostly about the signalling and human capital models of…

>I am not sure what you think Caplan says. His book is mostly about the signalling and human capital models of education. The vast majority of post-secondary students say they attend post-secondary education in order to increase their future earnings, so Caplan calculates the financial impact of various degrees, and then figures out how much is attributable to the various factors.

So I was quite intrigued when I read the post initially and thought this is about the sociatal implications of education. I thought his "conclusions" go squarely against what I know about education, i.e. there are strong historical and geographical correlation with education, gdp, child mortality rates, child birth rates etc. (most actually correlate more with female education than male education), Roslings work is a good reference here. I was considering reading the book to see what the calculations are and how they refute those correlations.

Now from what you're saying, he actually wrote a book with a click-bait title and which is about something very different from what the title implies (I guess "on the financial return of investment of a college education" would not have gotten the attention he wanted). And now he is complaining that education researchers are not engaging? I mean first, as far as I know most education research is not primarily interested in the financial ROIs of education (which is also highly country dependent), but if anything with the broad sociatal implications, but why should even those that might be interested engage if judging by the title Caplan is mainly interested in artificial controversy.

As a side note, why is this even economics, I would have more put this under business/MBA type calculations. Maybe I'm biased by the German system where economics is Volkswirtschaftslehre and Business is BWL, i.e. economics is to do with the economy of countries/states/peoples?

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#252

Post by cycomanic »

xyzzyz wrote: post #163
henrikschroder wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what does he say about care-free student life?

> [S]chool inculcates many attitudes that, regardless of their moral worth, impede on-the-job success. If you’re preparing kids for their adult roles, a year of work experience instills more suitable discipline and socialization than a year of school. > The imperfect overlap between the school ethic and the work ethic is especially blatant in modern American colleges. Fifty years ago, college was a full-time job. The…

> The imperfect overlap between the school ethic and the work ethic is especially blatant in modern American colleges. Fifty years ago, college was a full-time job. The typical student spent 40 hours a week in class or studying.98 Since the early 1960s, effort collapsed across the board. “Full-time” college students average 27 hours of academic work per week—and only 14 hours of studying. (...)

? So your sentence does not make logical sense to me? Did you mean before the 1960s people would spend 40h _plus_ studying. Because the way you write it is that fifty years ago college was 40h (in-class and studying), and now it is 27h in class + 14h studying (41h) so nothing changed.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#253

Post by retube »

civilized wrote: post #6

Just my dumb opinion here, but... there's something extremely implausible on its face about the idea that a sufficiently complex spreadsheet could calculate the difference in value generated from kids going to school versus kids not going to school. If people could be convinced that this was something more than a castle in the sky, maybe it would get more attention. I imagine a bunch of academics put their fingers to…

> I mean jeez, what did he even compare our status quo education system against? Where did the kids go in the counterfactual no-education scenario? Did the kids all go home to an infinite supply of stay-at-home moms? Did they go to extended daycare, all the way up to age 18? What did they do with all that time?

Exactly. I suspect no one cares about his spreadsheets because who's gonna waste their time on such a flawed proposition.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#254

Post by renewiltord »

periheli0n wrote: post #244

Isn't the real problem the economisation of education? The desire to express the value of education in monetary terms is really only useful for those running education businesses, like e.g. many of today's universities in the US ans UK. One side effect of the economisation of education is the desire to quantify and standardise "academic quality". For example, setting minimum pass rates for modules, which ultimately l…

> Students who graduated from such universities often are more capable of independent thinking in my experience.

Germany: 111 Nobel Laureates

University of Columbia: 83 Nobel Laureates

The whole country struggled to produce just a little more than one American university. They may think more independently, but it seems that it was so independent as to fail to advance human knowledge much more than a single American university.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#255

Post by cycomanic »

I have not read the book (it's the first time I heard about it), but I'm confused by what the title of the book seems to imply and what people here say about the book. I suspect that much of the discussion here seems to boil down to the same misunderstandings.

What sort of education is Caplan talking about? Primary, secondary, tertiary? The title seems to imply all education, but I guess that is not the case?

Does he talk about the benefit to society or the ROI for an individual? Again the title seems to imply it's about the overall benefit to society, but from what people are writing here it seems to be about the question if investing in a college education is a financial decision.

Can someone who read the books clarify these points, because I would be interested in the book if it is actually about the benefit to society and education in general, but if it is just about personal decisions then I don't care much and would consider the book a waste of time with a click-bait title.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#256

Post by renewiltord »

labcomputer wrote: post #239
whatshisface wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't asking that Caplan spend one second longer on his calculations automatically rule out everything else that anyone has ever said about the subject? That's the most interesting part of this for me - nobody's saying "you're missing some important factors, and let's add them." People are saying, "I don't know that you included all the factors, so I am going to go back to reading opinion columnists for whom 'facto…

> nobody's saying "you're missing some important factors, and let's add them. Ok, so I’ll say it. Caplan doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. And neither did the people who he asked to check his spreadsheets. What he is trying to do, in an informal hand-waving way, is something known as causal inference. There are formal, robust ways to do causal inference, which Caplan is not using. No amount of checking his arithmeti…

The practice is not the “do good science using the correct methods”. The practice is “call for increased education spending for *waves hands* reasons”. Listen, this is the old Internet trick: people show up demanding rigorous models and evidence when they see something they don’t like, but what they like they demand nothing of.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#257

Post by fartboi »

urthor wrote: post #214
xyzzyz wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If evidence we obtain from social sciences is so effective, why are they suffering from deep and wide reaching replication crisis?

It's more of a case that bad science was made, rather than "this type of science is bad." Toyota and GM have had widespread vehicle recalls in recent types. I wouldn't put that down to "4 wheeled transportation devices being intrinsically bad."

No post body was provided.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#258

Post by m000 »

edanm wrote: post #247
periheli0n wrote: post #244

Isn't the real problem the economisation of education? The desire to express the value of education in monetary terms is really only useful for those running education businesses, like e.g. many of today's universities in the US ans UK. One side effect of the economisation of education is the desire to quantify and standardise "academic quality". For example, setting minimum pass rates for modules, which ultimately l…

> Isn't the real problem the economisation of education? The desire to express the value of education in monetary terms is really only useful for those running education businesses, like e.g. many of today's universities in the US ans UK. I'm a big fan of education. However, when education is subsidized, you're implicitly making the decision that it's more important to pay for that education than to pay for e.g. more…

> you're implicitly making the decision that it's more important to pay for that education than to pay for e.g. more help for the homeless, more money for healthcare

Ironically, the same people who would complain about free education, would complain 10x over more money for the homeless or healthcare.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#259

Post by callesgg »

Uneducated people would not bother with investigating something like that and why would educated people try to undermine their own choices? It is not in their interest to do so.

On personal note... I for one did not go through higher education for the money. I did I so that I could alter my "social status". So for me it is not about my financials or really myself at all; it is about how other people perceive me.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#260

Post by rocqua »

renewiltord wrote: post #254
periheli0n wrote: post #244

Isn't the real problem the economisation of education? The desire to express the value of education in monetary terms is really only useful for those running education businesses, like e.g. many of today's universities in the US ans UK. One side effect of the economisation of education is the desire to quantify and standardise "academic quality". For example, setting minimum pass rates for modules, which ultimately l…

> Students who graduated from such universities often are more capable of independent thinking in my experience. Germany: 111 Nobel Laureates University of Columbia: 83 Nobel Laureates The whole country struggled to produce just a little more than one American university. They may think more independently, but it seems that it was so independent as to fail to advance human knowledge much more than a single American u…

I believe that, in the 40s and 50s the occupying forces intentionally drained the research capabilities of Germany (as part of a larger push draining industrial capabilities). Hence I would expect Germany to be kneecapped in their Nobel laureate production for a significant part of the last century.
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