6 Best Bryan Caplan Quotes

“The case against education is not that education is worthless. It is that education is overpriced.”

Caplan summarizes his thesis in the introduction, arguing that education has value but not as much as its cost suggests.

“If education is mostly signaling, then the social return to education is much lower than the private return.”

Caplan explains the key implication of the signaling model in Chapter 2.

“The sheepskin effect is the smoking gun for signaling.”

Caplan uses the sheepskin effect—the large jump in earnings at degree completion—as evidence that education is about credentials, not skills.

“Most of what you learn in school is forgotten, and most of what you remember is irrelevant to your job.”

Caplan summarizes the evidence on the low practical value of academic content in Chapter 3.

“The education system is a giant sorting machine, and the sorting is mostly about who is smart and who is conscientious.”

Caplan describes the signaling function of education in Chapter 2.

“If you want to know whether someone is smart, ask them to take an IQ test. If you want to know whether they are conscientious, ask them to show up on time.”

Caplan suggests that education is an indirect and costly way to measure these traits in Chapter 2.