Education Does Not Guarantee Economic Achievement

Forbes ^ | 06/13/2010 | John Tamny

[SeekAndFind]

A chart in last Sunday's New York Post revealed that only 35% of Americans could name even one member of the U.S. Supreme Court, and only 1% could name all nine members. That night Baby Stewie on Fox's The Family Guy admonished viewers who in a mock poll failed to attribute a famous quote to Henry David Thoreau.

Though Family Guy is merely a silly, often crude cartoon, Stewie's point about the clueless nature of most Americans, and his view that this speaks to our decline relative to other nations is a popular one, particularly among the political elite. For the left, American density when it comes to scholarly knowledge is a call for more spending on schools, while the right regularly seeks vouchers and education tax credits (so much for tax simplification!) in order to fix "schools that don't teach."

Both sides of the political spectrum believe that American frailty in the classroom foretells our economic doom relative to other nations where students perform much better. Unless we improve our schools, we'll soon fall behind countries that we're "competing" with economically.

Of course, there is enormous value in knowing how to add and subtract and pen a coherent sentence, but the education argument as it pertains to our economic health is completely divorced from reality. To see why, we need only consider the educational exploits of some of our country's greatest business successes.

[Buckeye McFrog]

from what I observe, the higher your level of education the more likely you are to be drawn into the halls of academia or some sniveling Federal Bureaucrat policy-wonk job, rather than doing anything productive.

[anniegetyourgun]

dunno

[The Great RJ]

I worked in housing development for many years and with two Harvard MBAs and a graduate of the Wharton School and was not impressed by their practical understanding of how business really works and saw them make some really poor business decisions. I subsequently met several true entrepreneurs, some educated at local colleges and universities others who lacked a college degree who knew more than all these MBAs combined and who had an enviable record of business success.

[WOBBLY BOB]

“NY passes students who get wrong answers on tests”

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/how_do_you_pass_ny_school_tests_tCqFKo40FhcwkO5SoPYWRI

[artaxerces]

A German high school grad is 4 YEARS ahead of his American counterpart in Math/science. His salary in the global marketplace is ~20k USD a year.

A Chinese high school grad is roughly comparable to his American counterpart in math/science. His salary in the global marketplace is ~8k USD a year.

Then we have the average American grad who thinks he is more productive than the German guy, looks down on the Chinese guy, and somehow believes that he “deserves” to be paid 30k a year.