SELF-SELECTION. The magazine column in Monday's Chicago Tribune (print edition) refers to "The story that got away: Education's 'big payoff'." The Forbes column in question, by Dan Seligman, has headline, "Contrary to what you were authoritatively told by the media, our government has no evidence that increased education will raise incomes." Seligman's main point: "They are ignoring--just as the Census Bureau is ignoring--the powerful possibility that the correlation exists mainly because smart people tend to want more education, and smart people are what employers keep looking for: workers who catch on fast, are easy to train, and don't screw up. Many employers have used college degrees as a proxy for intelligence. But if not-so-smart people try to get in on the high-income game by, say, going to college instead of grabbing a job at age 18, they will ultimately find it doesn't pay. The labor markets are quite sophisticated at sniffing out true mental-ability levels."

There are two hypotheses, with modest support for both positions. First, there is the human capital hypothesis: more schooling gets you thinking more clearly. Second, there is the signalling hypothesis: the degree is a signal of ability, but because it is costly to acquire, under some circumstances only those people who have the ability will acquire the signal. There are Nobel laureates in economics (Gary Becker and A. Michael Spence come to mind first) who earned the honor for thinking through the subtleties of these things. And yes, if we made public policy with the expectation that universal college education would raise everyone's living standards, we'd probably be disappointed.

Seligman makes some other observations that don't really move his argument forward. Consider "It is certainly possible to identify individuals not now going to college who would benefit if they did go. But it seems even easier to identify young persons who are in college and shouldn't be there. The enormous number of college students instantly needing remedial help when they show up on campus surely carries a message. The National Center for Education Statistics tells us that 35.5% of first- and second-year undergraduates report having taken remedial courses--most often in math but also in reading, writing and, getting to the truly clueless, "study skills" (taught to 17.4% of those in remedial programs)."

I think we have a Complex Proposition here. Perhaps the message those students taking remedial (make that "middle school") courses are sending is that the middle and high schools are not doing their jobs. Regime change begins in kindergarten. Perhaps the message is that the admissions office has been engaging in affirmative discrimination, with lower admission standards for some students than others, who will be at greater risk of failure, absent such support, than students who were admitted under tougher standards. Regime change continues at the admissions office. Or perhaps the message is that having sufficient bodies to pay the bonds on the office buildings and athletic facilities each year, whether or not those bodies remain in residence, once "remediated," to complete a degree. Regime change must include the central administration in that case.