RE: Re: Re: Re: farewell to academe

[Lisa & Ian Murray]

> I see to dimensions to Brad's question.  Is higher education late sorting
> mechanism or does it add to social productivity?  If free higher
> education would
> offer a wage premium to workers and if it added to social
> productivity, wouldn't
> it makes sense to promote education and then to tax the returns?
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"I would like to present a different view. Higher education, in this model,
contributes in no way to superior economic performance; it increases neither
cognition nor socialization. Instead, higher education serves  as a screening
device in that it sorts out individuals of differing abilities, thereby
conveying information to the purchasers of labor."

[Kenneth Arrow, "Higher Education as a Filter" in "The Economics of Information"
volume 4 of Collected Papers, page 116]

Ian