In Real Education (yet again, my full review is in the 9/29 NR), one of Charles Murray’s arguments is that too many people are going to college. I’ve made the point here myself that there’s little evidence about how much college actually increases income — it may be that the type of person who goes to college would have earned more regardless. In particular, college grads have (on average) higher IQs than non-grads, and IQ correlates with income.
Over at Gene Expression, Jason Malloy takes issue with this concept, though he admits he has not yet read the book. He makes a valuable contribution, but I’m not sure all his findings are actually in tension with Murray’s.
Basically, using the General Social Survey’s Wordsum IQ test, Malloy finds that educational attainment correlates with income even more than IQ does — and “people with average and below average IQs are getting just as much of a financial return out of their 4-year degree as those above the 85th percentile.”
With regards to Murray’s argument: In Real Education, Murray isn’t saying college is worthless for those with sub-genius IQs; he’s arguing that whatever skills are actually learned, could be learned better elsewhere, and in less time. Murray decries the phenomenon of employers using the bachelor’s degree as a screening mechanism even when the work isn’t that intellectually demanding, and Malloy’s finding might simply indicate this happens a lot — in other words, even for the average-IQ individual seeking average-IQ-demanding jobs, a degree is needed to open some doors, and this supports, not refutes, Murray. It’s also not fair for Malloy to compare current four-year grads to current two-year grads, because two-year degrees are not available (and respected by employers) in all the fields Murray thinks they should be. (This confusion probably results from Malloy responding to an op-ed rather than the full book.)
And with regard to my skepticism about college causing income: I’m not sure Malloy’s methodology shows that college degrees lead to higher income in themselves, rather than just indicating that future high-earners are more likely to attend college in the first place. He himself notes several problems here, and I’d like to add the issue of work ethic. Malloy has proven that a college degree is more than just a certificate of IQ, but I remember reading in What Is Intelligence? that tests of perseverance can predict achievement as well as an IQ test does. A bachelor’s degree may have the effect of evidencing both on one nifty piece of paper.
And (as Malloy also concedes), even if a college degree does in and of itself lead to higher income, it could be the credential effect, rather than actual skills learned, that makes the difference.
The one place Malloy is on strong footing is when it comes to “craft and trade” fields, which Murray claims are a better option for many students even under today’s educational system, and supposedly lead to particularly high incomes. (Murray: “Finding a good carpenter, painter, electrician, plumber, glazier, mason — the list goes on and on — is difficult, and it is a seller’s market. Journeymen craftsmen routinely make incomes in the top half of the income distribution while master craftsmen can make six figures.”)
But according to Malloy, it turns out that “people with 4-year degrees earn much more than people with 2-year degrees and trade jobs at every level of IQ.”