George Leef wrote on The Pope Center last week that, "A hefty new study purports to prove U.S. needs more college graduates, but flops":

...Before getting into the substance of the paper, it’s worth a moment to explain why this matters. With the American economy struggling like a swimmer fighting against a strong undertow, it’s now especially important to make wise use of resources. If we devote more money and manpower than necessary to education (or anything else) at this point, we’ll make our bad economic situation even worse.

Not only that, but if, as I’ve argued, the more we expand higher education the more we degrade educational standards, following the paper’s advice will also make a bad educational situation worse.

The authors begin by arguing that the government’s official source of information about the labor force (the Bureau of Labor Statistics) misleads the public about the extent to which jobs in the future will require college education. “Ultimately,” they write, “the official data misinforms the educational choices and career plans of individuals and their counselors.” The BLS doesn’t show that the nation is facing an acute shortage of workers who have a college education. That has the authors upset.

I doubt strongly that anyone makes educational choices on the basis of BLS projections, but let’s put that cavil aside and proceed to the crux of the matter: Will future labor force conditions increasingly necessitate and reward college education?  Continue reading This Paper Refutes Itself >>