I think too many people go to college.
Having taken boatloads of IQ tests, and interpreted the results of similar tests taken by my children, I am suspicious of reducing intelligence to a single number.
One of my children is an unhappy IQ-test statistical outlier, landing in the 95th percentile for general intelligence. Why is she unhappy to be smarter than 95 out of 100 people? Because her older siblings have tested in the 99th percentile. From my perspective, that means they do well on IQ tests, period. Everything else remains to be proven.
My unhappy daughter shares with her father the sort of intelligence orthogonal to, and therefore untested by, standard IQ tests. Her sort of intelligence is invaluable to the everyday running of the world, and can seem just as inexplicable, hence magical, as the usual testable sort.
Roll all this together, and you can understand why I found this article by Arnold Kling at TCS Daily worth reading.
Going to college is more about earning a credential that opens doors than it is about who might be best suited for further academic pursuit rather than training in a trade or technical specialty.
Is a degree in journalism more valuable than four years of experience in the field? Does an MBA prepare you better for an entrepreneurial career or for muddling through as a middle-management drone? How is a four-year degree in technical theater better than four years spent learning the ropes (and the gels) as an assistant stage manager?
Education has slumped into a rote formalism that doesn’t recognize learning outside of classrooms and books, that refuses legitimacy to anything that doesn’t provide a credential that can be framed and hung on a wall or cited in a resumé.
Such a lifeless approach to lifelong learning runs counter to the insane flexibility and lust for new understanding that is increasingly necessary. A strong grounding that enables sound judgement is even more valuable.
Neither is readily available through our current educational system.
(Hat tip: Jonah Goldberg at NRO’s The Corner.)
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[...] CEH Wiedel discusses this Arnold Kling article as it applie to her own family and concerns about education and IQ. [...]