Two recently released books offer significant criticisms of the current landscape of higher education. As to what we should do about those problems, the two books propose completely opposed solutions.
Bryan Caplan, a professor of economics at George Mason University, gives away his big idea in his title, "The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money." Caplan argues that the primary value of a college degree is in what it "signals" rather than what people may have learned or experienced.
In Caplan's view, most education is wasted on the young, who are incapable of appreciating or benefiting freedom education. Caplan's solution is to "stop using tax dollars to fund education of any kind." He sees a greater role for vocational or trade education, starting early as children fail to show interest or aptitude (资质) in school subjects, which should primarily focus on the "practical"-not art, music or anything else. Caplan even puts in a good word for child labor as an alternative to the schooling they neither enjoy nor appreciate.
Cathy Davidson, director of the Futures Initiative at the City University of New York, offers a different attitude in "The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World in Flux (变化)."
Davidson also believes higher education needs to change, but rather than starving it, she advocates for a broad-based "revolution" that attacks the barriers between students and learning, including educational costs, approaches to curriculum, and how we measure and credential (提供证明) students. Davidson has a chapter on "college for everyone", examining the potential to innovate community colleges to serve as ladders to social mobility.
Education does need to continue to evolve. But it's Davidson who has a vision for what education could and should be that's consistent with the traditional values of freedom, opportunity and progress we associate with education. As to which of these two visions we'd like to follow, we have a choice. I hope we choose wisely.
