Hi everyone. Welcome to the A6 and Z podcast. I'm Sonal. Today, Mark Andreessen is co-hosting one of our A6 and Z podcast book

with Brian Kaplan, the author of the book titled The Case Against Education and Subtitled, Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money.

Brian is a professor of economics at George Mason University and is also the author of other popular books, including the myth of the rational voter, which we also touch on towards the end of the episode.

But we spend most of the episode talking about the themes of his latest book, which came out earlier this year, on the role of signaling in education and workplace hiring.

And since we love how Brian is a self-professed cynical idealist, we decided to focus

first on probing the cynical side of his arguments, especially in terms of problems, and the rest

of the episode on the idealist side in terms of implications and solutions, including tech that's already

here and that may be sci-fi. But first, we ask Brian to summarize the key ideas of the book. That's what

podcast are for after all.

So the key idea of the book is that there's really two different ways why education might

pay in the labor market. One of them is the usual one, where you go to school, you learn

some useful skills, and then employers like you more because you can do more stuff for them.

But there's a second totally different story,

and this is that you go to school to impress employers. And even if what you learned in school

will never come up on the job, employers still might prefer you and pay you more and give you

better job because you have convinced them through your education. Some of what you learn in school

goes in the first category, literacy and numeracy. Those are useful job skills. But a Some of what you learn in school goes in the first category,

literacy and numeracy. Those are useful job skills. But a lot of what you do seems more like the second thing, which economists call signaling. Looking better than other people is a great way

to advance yourself, but it is not a way for society to advance. We can't all be richer if we all

look better to other people. The result of this is what's called

credential inflation, where you need more education to be considered worthy of employment.

And then the heart of the book is that while selfishly speaking, it doesn't really matter

...