For Most People, Charles Murray is a Waste of Time

I actually don't hate Charles Murray. I have a wide libertarian streak and liked his What it means... I even thought the Bell Curve had moments of lucid insight (but for the love of god don't tell anyone). But as a student of higher education I found his recent rant in the Wall Street Journal on traditional higher ed to be, well, a complete waste of time.

His thesis is a traditional bachelor's degree is useless, although he rails particularly against everyone's favorite bugbear, liberal arts education. He proposes replacing degrees of any sort with (wait for it) ....standardized certification examinations. While mounting evidence continues to prove standardized examinations to be Panaceatown, USA, the universal solvent of all of life's ills, I just can't see Murray's proposal as anything short of simpleminded.

His model and inspiration is the CPA exam:

The same test is used nationwide. It is thorough -- four sections, timed, totaling 14 hours. A passing score indicates authentic competence (the pass rate is below 50%). Actual scores are reported in addition to pass/fail, so that employers can assess where the applicant falls in the distribution of accounting competence. You may have learned accounting at an anonymous online university, but your CPA score gives you a way to show employers you're a stronger applicant than someone from an Ivy League school.

Now, I think the CPA is swell.Heck, m y wife is a (nonpracticing) CPA. The CPA/public accounting model IS a good model. HOWEVER, having passed the CPA certification exam is but one part of the public accounting holy trinity. In addition one needs the requisite work experience in accounting and, um, a bachelors degree! So maybe Charlie thinks the certification test is sufficient, but the fine people at the AICPA think it's only part of the equation.

I agree that the CPA model is excellent. There's a corpus of objective know-how (the exam), general higher-order thinking skills (the degree) and experience in the profession. Very sensible, very robust, very much not an indictment of our current system of higher education.

Murray's fond of the casual, broad assertion untroubled by fact or rationale: "Outside a handful of majors -- engineering and some of the sciences -- a bachelor's degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance." Huh? Which particular sciences pass murray-muster I wonder. Physical chemistry and particle physics? Combinatorial genomics perhaps? Base ideological cheerleading plain & simple.

Higher ed and education in general is debased by this notion that its essence is building up objective knowledge and practical skills. Objective knowledge and practical skills are necessary but not nearly sufficient (the fact that they are indeed necessary is itself often lost on the pathologically testing-averse among us). Education is the essential means by which our culture is perpetuated, fer chrissakes. It cannot be reduced to scantron-graded exams, as convenient as it would be. We need the acculturation that takes place on campuses. It allows our prosperity, our democracy, our way of life to endure.

Which is in no way to say the higher ed state of practice is not a mess. Inefficiency, insufficient transparency, elitism, moral hazard, skyrocketing cost, middling results and institutional indifference thereto, mission creep, moral turpitude and general shamefulness. Verily. Any hint of sarcasm is entirely unintentional (really!). I'm with Murray on these general concerns and on two other specific points:

• That the U.S. is increasingly class-riven is problematic. Preach on, Brother Murray. Higher ed is not a root cause here of course. Can it be part of a solution? Sure thing: access is the thing, need-based financial aid, affirmative action, etc. Would it really help to eliminate the system as we know it? Ah, no.
• That "everyone in every occupation starts as an apprentice". Yes, absolutely, you betcha, yes. Once again, though, here in the modern world apprenticeship is no less necessary but is ever increasingly insufficient. Might (might) be sufficient for, say, plumbers, but just isn't going to cut it for software engineers, actuaries, geneticists, and such & such. (N.B. to Chuck: smart folks who spend their entire careers thinking hard about the nature of education are fully aware of the importance of apprenticeship).

We don't need to eliminate the BA itself to eliminate the "stigma of not having a BA". For that matter, it's not obvious we'd benefit socially or economically from eliminating that particular stigma in the first place. Admittedly I'm of two minds myself about the "bachelor's degrees for all" movement and I'm squeamish too about higher ed's credentialing role. One thing does seem self-evident: we need more post-secondary education now and still more in the future.