Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Makes you think

We are in the age of mass higher education. It is not exactly an oxymoron, but it does create a variety of tensions and problems. I bristle when "years of education" or "graduation rates" (high school or any other) are casually used as meaningful indicators. When the variances become huge, the simple stats fail.

These are among the ideas discussed by Arnold Kling and John Merrifield in their respectful but critical review of Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz'z The Race Between Education and Technology. The review is in the latest EconJournalWatch. Makes you think.