Too Much Education?

 

     A study found that half of US workers are over qualified
for their jobs.  Should we be concerned about over qualification? 
Is too much training and knowledge possible?

     On the flip side, millions don't have enough training for
jobs that produce much of anything.  We definitely have an
imbalance in training.  Obviously, resources have been
misallocated.

     The misallocation extends well beyond education.  One
reason workers are over trained is we don't have enough savings
to invest in equipment and facilities for the trained workers to
use.

     It is pointless to train research scientists if we don't have
the savings to build research facilities for them.  Investment is
indispensable to production and prosperity.  It is also
indispensable that savings and investment be put to the proper
uses.  We must invest in the right amounts of everything.

     The most productive investments are the most profitable
ones.  Free people guided by free market prices seek out those
profitable, productive investments, while shunning nonproductive
investments.

     Free people guide savings to their most productive uses. 
People make mistakes.  Mistaken investments are costly.  Thus,
free people seek to identify mistaken investments and quickly
liquidate them.

     Why then are we investing in the wrong kinds of
education, and probably investing too much in education?  We
aren't free to invest as we choose.  Government manipulates and
distorts investment.  Student loans and other government
manipulations have created massive educational waste.  The
students, or taxpayers, are stuck with the still unpaid bills for
much of that education.

     We have seen how government manipulation of housing
and housing finance inflated the housing bubble that burst into
disaster.   Government decided it knew best the kind and
quantity of houses we needed.

     Government also decided that families should own homes
rather than rent them.  The irony of this is that we now have the
lowest level of home ownership in decades.  Thank you
government.

     Free people interacting in voluntary cooperation won't
archive perfect investment balance.  Those who demand
perfection can always point out the failures of freedom.  Those
failures don't look so bad when compared to the far greater
failures of investments manipulated by government.

     There is one thing our education system hasn't taught
many people.  That is, don't judge by comparing the results
achieved to a perfect world.  Everything will come up short. 
Only make comparisons to options that are possible.

     Interestingly, usually only the private sector is judged in
comparison to utopia.  Private sector failures are met with claims
we have to much private sector and too little government. 
Government failures are also met with the claim we have to
much private sector and too little government.  Am I the only
one who sees the absurdity in this?

     Government manipulation of investment in education
mirrors government manipulation of housing investment.  It has
kited the cost of education pushing investment into training for
jobs that don't exist.  Part of the reason those jobs don't exist is
government has diverted savings away from building tools and
equipment.  If government backs off from manipulating
investment in education, much of the education establishment
will collapse.  This will have serious economic consequences. 
Like all bubbles, sooner or later the education bubble will burst. 
The sooner the bubble pops, the less the damage.

     The malinvestment in education will be liquidated.  If
government stays out of the way we will build a new structure
for education that will reduce costs and direct our savings to
where they will be most productive.  The new investment
allocation will better allocate savings within education, and
between education and other investments.

     The greatest crimes of government against prosperity are
the miss allocation of investment and the destruction of savings
through tax, borrow and spend.  Only by eliminating this double
whammy can be save prosperity.

aldmccallum@gmail.com
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Copyright 2013
Albert D. McCallum