I'm a firm believer in the value of a liberal arts education, being an English major with an MA in creative writing myself. I actually worked for a while as a professional writer, a job for which my education was directly applicable.

After a while I realized that professional writing sucked as a job and I transitioned myself to a career as a computer programmer, a career in which I've prospered.

I actually think that my liberal arts training serves me well every day. The kind of critical thinking I have to do is definitely something I trained for in college. Beyond that, about 80% of what I do is communication.

I would actually love to hire more liberal arts guys as programmers, but somehow that never seems to happen where I work. We mostly hire young, inexperienced CS majors who don't know a damn thing about computer programming.

Which brings me to my other point. Colleges and universities, by and large, do a lousy job of preparing people for work. This may not be true in all fields, but it's true in a lot of them.

Even in a field where you have a direct tie-in to a career path, like computer science, the focus is so heavy on book learning and theory that nearly every recent CS graduate I've encountered doesn't know the first thing about writing the kind of code that actually gets written in the real world, or, more importantly, doing all of the complex communication tasks required of a developer--from writing docs to communicating effectively in meetings with business users, BAs, and so on.

My point is that the university system has been reimagined as a vocational training system, which is something it is not. What Ezra describes above is the ideal for which the university system was originally created--to churn out thinkers by forcing them to learn Greek and write papers on Romantic poetry.

But we've come now to think of universities as places that prepare people to work in high paying jobs. And so the idea of learning Greek and writing papers on Romantic poetry seems silly.

What's needed, I think, is some kind of separation of concerns here. A liberal arts education is a valuable thing. But so is real vocational training, especially for older students trying to learn new skills.

Suppose I get downsized next year and the prospects somehow look grim for a 40-year-old software developer, and I decide I'd like to be an accountant. To do this now, I'd have to enroll in a bachelor's program and take 30 to 60 hours of classes unrelated to accounting. This is a really absurd situation. I've already got tons of education. I don't need another BA.

What I want to do is to learn the skills I need to get an accounting job and to pass the required certification exams. Sadly, our education system does not offer any good options for this kind of situation.

I started out as a gender studies major and ended up a programmer. I, too, feel that I'm better at my job because of my training in communication and critical thinking. Murray is on crack; it's the worst sort of 'education isn't for the whole person, it's so that you fit as a cog in the machine'. *spit*

Internships, Internships, Internships.

In my experience as a recent grad, the students who've attended colleges/universities that place an emphasis on real world, practical experience, fare the best in the job market. I graduated with five internships on my resume, and I can tell you I feel I learned more skills directly applicable to my job from those internships than I did from my courses. However, I'd never have been able to keep up with the internships without the training and base information I picked up in my college classes. But I can tell you that i'm EXTREMELY grateful my major had an internship requirement.

(Btw, this is a good way for people with seemingly "useless" majors to go out and test their skills in different venues.)

Internships, Internships, Internships.

In my experience as a recent grad, the students who've attended colleges/universities that place an emphasis on real world, practical experience, fare the best in the job market. I graduated with five internships on my resume, and I can tell you I feel I learned more skills directly applicable to my job from those internships than I did from my courses. However, I'd never have been able to keep up with the internships without the training and base information I picked up in my college classes. But I can tell you that i'm EXTREMELY grateful my major had an internship requirement.

(Btw, this is a good way for people with seemingly "useless" majors to go out and test their skills in different venues.)

Eeek...sorry for the double post--it takes forever for these comments to load!

I think you are all missing Murray's thesis, which in my experience has a good deal of merit.

1. College and university degrees are essentially worthless in determining what a person's occupational aptitude is. This is especially true of BA degrees, due to lax standards which allows basically anyone with enough time and money to eventually get a degree.

2. Given the enormous costs, both direct and indirect, of a BA degree and the enormous discrepency of the value of such a degree (based on how much work a student puts into it) wouldn't it be better for us to have specific knowledge based tests to determine aptitude and qualifications? Why spend 4-6 years on a BA and over $100,000, if you could pass such a test in 2 years taking online courses costing $5,000?

3. A certification is better than a degree because it allows all students and merit-based shot at proving their aptitude, rather than being judged on where they went to school and it values their actual knowledge rather than halo effects of what college the person attends.

4. People could still attend traditional liberal arts colleges, and if they offered a better outcome, that would be reflected in the results of certification tests. On the other hand, people who could not attend elite colleges because of financial reasons, life situation or just lack of interest in high school would have the same opportunity to compete with a graduate of Harvard. The only one's disadvantaged would be students who got into good colleges and then coast once they get their (which, in my experience, are legion).

All in all, it seems to me an interesting proposal. It will never happen because the monied interests in colleges and univesities are to invested in the present sytem. But it probably would be a far more egalitarian system than at present.

Here's what colleges teach:

Don't worry about doing things on time -- you can always pull an all-nighter.

Minor errors of fact don't matter, it's the big picture that counts.

Because your exam is blind graded, it doesn't matter what your reputation is in the classroom. A reputation for being careful, smart and creative is worthless.

Don't work with others- your grade is what matters, and you don't want to be pulled down by freeloaders.

Since no one is going to rely on your work, nobody cares if you're right or wrong. Just be provocative.

Once you have the answer, you're done. You don't need to worry about persuading anyone else that you're right.

Go ahead and turn in your first draft. It doesn't matter if your argument is a little bit disorganized. The prof can figure it out.

Rob Mac gets it right (except for his misattribution of this post to Ezra).

There's no conflict between what Murray suggests and Miller's ideal of college education, an ideal which I share. In fact, Murray's suggestion is a complement to Miller's ideal.

If we had more certification exams like Murray suggests, it would be very easy for someone who knows "how to think and analyze information" to acquire the skills, pass the exam to demonstrate competence, and switch careers, without having to go back through expensive college education all over again.

Exams like Murray suggests would make a philosophy degree (like mine!) more, not less, valuable.

This is more tweaking when what is needed is an overhaul. The only reason why this discussion is necessary at all is that college costs too much, and therefore, rather than focusing in on teaching critical thinking it must be perceived now as a guaranteed chance to make money. I have a theory that students and parents would worry less about this if the cost of obtaining education wasn't so prohibitive.

I believe Bear-Stearns was pretty much famous for realizing that selling bonds didn't require that you attended Harvard and studied Economics-- it required that you be good at selling stuff.

Certainly there's too much credentialism going on (do you really need a degree to be an administrative assistant?). On the other hand, what Murray is proposing is effectively a formula to prevent vertical professional movement: formal education and the multi-faceted background that a college degree provides will always be selected for when promoting upwards. Passing a certification exam might get you an entry level position, but no one will want to promote you upwards. On-the-job experiences train you for on-the-job knowledge. Formal education is valuable for anyone that expects a bit more abstract knowledge and background.

Keep in mind, though, that bachelor's degrees can be had without much trouble: attend a community college for 2 years and a local state university campus for 2 years after that. I'm not saying that it's the best education in the world, but if you're in the sort of position where a college degree is probably not necessary for what you want to do with your life, then "going through the motions" by getting a degree at a local college for very little expense probably won't be a big burden.

Ironic, don't you think, that the bastion of free-market enterprise would recommend Confucian-style testing to see if you're 'qualified' for a job? Just what we need for a rapidly changing, highly-competetive workforce... automatons with minor abilities to think critically, assimilate new information, and communciate effectively with others.

I think what Charles Murray really wants are narrowly qualified worker drones that can be easily dumped and paid minimal wages based on very narrow compensation criteria.

One segment of the US economy that has remained premier in global competition: higher education. China, India, Germany, Japan, etc. all send their best and brightest here. Why? Because our higher education system is the envy of the world (still) not because it trains vocational workers, but it trains people to think critically and innovatively.

On second thought, the conservatives have destroyed the finanical markets, federal government, manufacturing, the housing markets, and on and on... why not go after higher education now?

What's common to Ezra's post and all the comments so far is that they are all focused on jobs and careers. Ezra and others here disagree that college should become more vocationally oriented than it is. I agree. But their argument is that a university education (the implication is a classical liberal arts education) helps prepare you for a job just as much as a more vocational education would; not that the university education is good in and of itself.

This is a fascinating example of the American attitude about work, which in the period of the American revolution was an astonishingly new and revolutionary idea. Instead of the classical republican ideal of the disinterested, educated, idle gentleman as the best thing, and work as itself mean and suited only to the lower class, Americans began to exalt "work" and "career" as a good and necessary thing for all.

I'm not saying one way is better than another, I just find it interesting. Even the proponents of a traditional university education seem only to argue that it is just as good job training as a more vocational education. The American view of jobs, even of "work" itself, is historically a very new thing.

I meant Ben Miller's post (forgot that Ezra is on vaca)!

Jackson, it's because in America we have a tradition of admiration of those who "get their hands dirty" with work that we are such an impressive country. Innovation and experimentation requires an ability to be interested and a disinclination to be idle. If you believe that work will always be taken care of by "other people," you're never going to take an interest yourself in questions of invention and productivity. In the old world, they have philosopher-kings. We have philosopher-laborers.

Thinking a little more about what Murray is addressing, part of the problem is that people are getting BA degrees and then being shunted into dead-end jobs. Murray asks, "why do people taking on dead-end jobs need a BA?" I'm thinking, "why is the career path for these jobs such a dead end?"

Curiosity, ability to learn, and ability to organize thoughts and communicate them to others are not specific, testable vocational skills. I did not learn many of the specific skills I use every day when I was in college. In fact, when I was in college many of those skills hadn't even been invented yet. What I did learn in college was how to acquire new skills, how to apply them in a useful way, and how to communicate the results.

@Rob Mac:

To sit for CPA exam, you don't need second bachelor degree. The most common route for second career is to get a Master of Science in Accountancy.

http://www.bc.edu/schools/csom/msa/admission.html

or

http://www.busadm.wayne.edu/article.php?id=11

The time requirement differ by school. But for people who took or tested out required undergraduate classes, it's doable in one year.

Similarly, a former co-worker, a biology/pre-med major, got a MS in Nursing after being rejected by medical schools one times too many. She completed the degree in less than two year, and passed NCLEX to became a RN.

For some professions, a second bachelor is unavoidable. But accounting is not one of them.(In the states I am aware of)

"China, India, Germany, Japan, etc. all send their best and brightest here. Why? Because our higher education system is the envy of the world (still) not because it trains vocational workers, but it trains people to think critically and innovatively."

No, they come here for graduate degrees in sciences - where many of our public and private universities have huge research budgets funded by US taxpayers and corporations.

Tyro, I'll reiterate: I'm not saying that old idea of work is better or worse (in fact, it seems like it would be impossible today). I'm just commenting on the fact that it's an interesting historical transformation.

Not stating an opinion! Not sure why you assumed I was.

Jackson, I know you weren't stating an opinion about the situation; I was just giving a little background on why, I think, that was and what the consequences were.

Of course, Charles Murray got his undergraduate degree in... history. So did George W. Bush, Irving Kristol, Max Boot, David Frum, and Bill O'Reilly. Brit Hume and Karen Hughes studied English. William Bennett studied philosophy. Et cetera.

Meanwhile, the top investment banks and management consultancies brag about hiring Ivy League literature majors. Those firms know that a trained monkey could do everything asked of first-year quants or associate consultants, as long as that monkey had the right connections....

Tyro is absolutely right that vocational education limits upward mobility. From a right-wing perspective, this is a feature rather than a bug. The American Right wants to concentrate as much wealth as possible in as few hands as possible: this not only makes life very pleasant for those privileged few, but also creates the deep-and-narrow base of support that the Right needs to push its agenda of imperialism abroad and authoritarianism at home.

The Right wants to create a country filled with a downwardly-mobile "middle class"--ordinary folks who are necessarily obsessed with the technical details of getting by in the day-to-day life of American society, and who have neither the time nor the training to question the basic structure of that society. This is, after all, the same group of con men who want you to believe that our country's current economic structure stems from the natural law of the mythical "free market," when in fact it results from a long line of deliberate policy choices made since the 1970s.

So, by all means, get one of Murray's vocational certificates in accounting, or human resources, or marketing; you'll probably get by okay on about $40,000 a year, and at least your job won't be sent to China. Meanwhile, members the conservative overclass will stay focused on the big picture and use their political power to help themselves to the real wealth in this country. And they can even do with degrees in history and philosophy, since it's not what they know; it's who they know.

Support for vocational training of the kind Murray suggests shows off the Straussian roots of the American Right: let the masses content themselves with the necessities of everyday life; the privileged elite will handle the big questions and help themselves to the big prizes.

@Rob Mac:

As a former professor of computer science, I'd like to point out that our educational strategy was based on the idea that we didn't want to spend a lot of time teaching students something that would be obsolete in five years.

I taught theory courses. Mostly the students hated them, and wanted to do more programming. But then they'd come back a year after graduation and tell my how important and pervasive the ideas I taught them were.

This is an application of the idea of a liberal education. Learn concepts that can be broadly applied. Drill into detail to support those concepts, and to learn how to do that, not because those particulars are important in the broad scheme of things.

That said, I think the conservatives really want to keep their kids out of the human sexuality classes, and away from the radical Marxist professors. You know, the ones that provide evidence of global warming and stuff like that.

Instead, we should think of postsecondary education as an opportunity to learn how to think and analyze information such that a graduate can take these non-specific skills and apply them to any job.

I couldn't agree more, which is why I think Murray's proposal has significant merit. Were there to exist more independent vocational competency exams, a lot of people who don't have an easy time of college (either because they're not constitutionally suited for the college lifestyle or they lack funds) would no doubt opt for the examination route as a path to a decent-paying career. I strongly suspect the remainder -- those who choose colleges and universities -- would by definition be composed of individuals more likely than under the status quo to be there primarily for their love of learning, and their desire for a liberal education.

A robust system of vocational exams might help shift undergraduate university instruction away from its current role as the primary provider of vocational education. I think on balance that would be a good thing for colleges and universities.

Many of you speak as if the dumbing down hasn't already occured. I have a friend who is a college professor - supposedly one of the most prominent in his field. He regularly bitches to me about the lack of critical thinking from people graduating from college today. This is the other element- not only has education for critical thinking become prohibitive, but we are being taught to lack the skills to even know what we are missing. In that way, many are right about the motives, but miss the point that its already happening in many institutions.

...vocational education limits upward mobility. From a right-wing perspective, this is a feature rather than a bug. The American Right wants to concentrate as much wealth as possible in as few hands as possible...Meanwhile, members the conservative overclass will stay focused on the big picture and use their political power to help themselves to the real wealth in this country.

ML: Even if your cynical view of American life were valid, do you really think that large numbers of kids from the lower socioeconomic levels are going to end up working as Manhattan investment bankers or K Street lawyers if we merely managed to get equip a few more of them with college degrees? Also, last time I looked, the "conservative overclass" was looking a lot less vigorous and dominant -- as least compared to the rising liberal overclass of creative workers in such fields as science, law, medicine, the arts, higher education, and media.

For the record I've seen the data on America's slipping position with respect to college education, and it is troubling, and I'm open to hearing about ways to combat this problem. In the end, though, we're basically talking about more government money, and I suspect diminishing returns will set in rather early in the process, because more government money for post-secondary education -- while something I support -- surely exacerbates education inflation. In other words, some of the gains -- perhaps a lot of the gains -- we might hope to realize by spending more taxpayer money to fund post-secondary education will increasingly be eaten up by the higher prices flowing from that increased demand. I sincerely hope any large scale efforts to increase post-secondary educational access focus on increasing capacity. And I also hope we're willing to look at lots of other ideas -- including the wider use of vocational testing as proposed by Murray.

According to the people who measure these things, the undergraduate major which results in top performance on the MCAT is . . . . biology? Chemistry? No, it happens to be philosophy. Generally, humanities and social sciences outperform biological and physical sciences. Look, for example, at the examinee characteristics here:

http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/examineedata/pubs.htm

The top performing majors are, in order, philosophy, economics and physics -- disciplines in which one must develop the capability of navigating complex and poorly defined problems with insufficient, noisy, possibly contradictory information.

So how about that -- the one major most far removed from practicality is the best preparation for a professional career.

Brock said:

Rob Mac gets it right (except for his misattribution of this post to Ezra).

Yes. Sorry about that, Ben.

@Kanchou: Thanks for the info on becoming a CPA. I guess I could have picked a better example.

@Doctor Jay: Sorry to denigrate your (former) field. However, I stand by my analysis. I'd take a philosophy major who taught himself computer programming in his spare time over a CS major any day of the week. My opinion is by far the minority in the industry, though, so you can rest assured that CS programs are safe.

Tyro said:

Keep in mind, though, that bachelor's degrees can be had without much trouble: attend a community college for 2 years and a local state university campus for 2 years after that. I'm not saying that it's the best education in the world . . .

You make a solid point about cost. A BA does not have to be prohibitively expensive. In many states (Florida, for example) it really isn't. But be careful of denigrating the kind of education you describe. I'd be willing to bet that close to a majority of BAs are achieved in exactly the way you describe. And going to Duke, Harvard, or Yale might make you a lot of great connections, but there is no basis for thinking it actually provides a better education than attending a state school.

Paul - interesting charts. I also note that the "specialized health" category of majors always performed the worst overall compared to other majors. Looks like the one group of degrees where people aim to be doctors end up getting the worst scores on a test.

As to the rest of this discussion,except for engineers, professors, teachers, and test tube cleaners (aka chemistry and biology), very few real world jobs actually lend themselves to areas of rigorous study. Most of us work in jobs that cannot be replicated in the classroom, and as we move thru various positions like this in life we have to be able to adapt. An undergrad degree by itself doesn't train for anything per se, and it shouldnt, instead it trains you to think. If you want a specialized job, you have to go get more education anyway.

One more thing: I had a good friend in high school who longed to be a computer programmer. As a senior he would talk about his likely starting salary and how he had a career path, in contrast to me, the measly history major. Of course, my friend, after three years working as a programmer, hates it. He makes about twice what I made (around 70k), but he's quitting to go to Chicago business school. He wants to be an investment banker.

I, on the other hand, always wanted to go to law school, and thats where I am now. But even though I made less money at the outset, at least my job prospects were wider than my friends. He could only be a programmer, though because he's quite smart he probably could do anything no matter what. But I could go to employers and tell them I know how to write, how research, analyze, communicate orally, and be creative. I got that from a broad education. And thats the benefit of liberal arts.

Jasper: ML: Even if your cynical view of American life were valid, do you really think that large numbers of kids from the lower socioeconomic levels are going to end up working as Manhattan investment bankers or K Street lawyers if we merely managed to get equip a few more of them with college degrees?

The point isn't to make it possible for lower-class children to become investment bankers (or lawyers or what have you). The point is to create a society that makes it is easier for them to lead secure and rewarding lives without becoming investment bankers.

According to the people who measure these things, the undergraduate major which results in top performance on the MCAT is . . . . biology? Chemistry? No, it happens to be philosophy. Generally, humanities and social sciences outperform biological and physical sciences. Look, for example, at the examinee characteristics here:

http://www.aamc.org/students/mcat/examineedata/pubs.htm

The top performing majors are, in order, philosophy, economics and physics -- disciplines in which one must develop the capability of navigating complex and poorly defined problems with insufficient, noisy, possibly contradictory information.

So how about that -- the one major most far removed from practicality is the best preparation for a professional career.

Two words: SELECTION BIAS

What % of philo majors aspire to take the MCAT, vs the % of bio majors who aspire to take it? I'd bet its a difference of at least 70%

You cant compare the small # of people who do philosophy and apply to med school as a comparison base against a huge group of bio majors.

I submit to you that if you took english majors performance on the PE (principles of engineering exam used to license engineers) that they would do better than engineering majors. Does that mean that an english major is a better prep for engineering than an engineering major? Of course not, it just means that the very tiny % of english majors who switch to engineering are likely to outshine the huge hulk of engineering grads who all take the PE exam.

That last post makes no sense at all. But whatever- since when has logic played a role here.

There is already a test lab for Murray’s proposals, it is called IT certification.

It’s working out……, um….., OKish, but not overwhelmingly great.

Google paper MCSE and brain dump and you can see the actual results of Murray’s proposal. While there are some positive points to it, there are also a lot of negative ones.

Anonymous' logic is sound, and accords with my anecdotal evidence. Those of my classmates who pursued careers outside of academia had chosen their path over the course of four years of thought on the matter and were exceedingly motivated to succeed. This was at a Small Liberal Arts College so liberal we don't even have majors.

As the game is set to be released on September 18th many players will be pushing hard to level their characters as fast as possible as well as farming as much gold as they can on the process. Warhammer gold is valued the highest during the start of the game when every player is striving to get as much of it as possible into their own hands.

That said, I think the conservatives really want to keep their kids out of the human sexuality classes, and away from the radical Marxist professors. You know, the ones that provide evidence of global warming and stuff like that.

The point is to create a society that makes it is easier for them to lead secure and rewarding lives without becoming investment bankers.

I also hope we're willing to look at lots of other ideas -- including the wider use of vocational testing as proposed by Murray.

This was at a Small Liberal Arts College so liberal we don't even have majors.

My opinion is by far the minority in the industry, though, so you can rest assured that CS programs are safe.

Go ahead and turn in your first draft. It doesn't matter if your argument is a little bit disorganized. The prof can figure it out.