This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, June 13th, 2018. I'm Caleb Brown.

The cost-benefit analysis for a standard four-year college degree is something too few young people consider.

Author Zach Slavac says it's more important than ever for young people to think seriously about not taking the path most traveled.

What do we know about the value of a college degree

over the last few decades?

Well, one of the things that we know about the value of a college degree is that it is not a signal of human capital.

This is something that Brian Kaplan has written extensively on, especially in his new book, The Case Against Education, that when somebody

has a college degree that does not necessarily signal to employers that they know more than

somebody who does not. Rather, it's a signal of other things, right? Some of those things

are traits like conformity, the ability to keep your head low and focus on

something for four years which employers do value that is important to a lot of employers navigate a bureaucracy

Navigate a bureaucracy absolutely I mean historically if we actually want to look back at the history of higher education and K through 12 education,

it was largely developed alongside and in addition to large government and corporate bureaucracies.

So it is a tool largely for those.

It's not really surprising that a lot of the gilded age universities in the United States

tend to be named after people who built very large

bureaucratic organizations. Carnegie Mellon is a really great example of that.

But one of the things we also know is that the power of that signal has been going down. The power of that signal has

been going down while the cost of acquiring it has been going up. Just for

inflation I think the only thing that has gone up faster than tuition might be

textbooks and medical costs. Everything else generally tends to go down which puts employers and those pursuing the credentials in a really weird position.

So the value of that signal is going down and more because more people are getting it basic

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