Ashton: What kind of triangle is this?!

Buddy: Right, dude.

Ashton: No, seriously, I need the answer.

Buddy: Right.

Ashton: Look you jerk, if I don’t know the answer I’ll never get certified!

Buddy: Right!!

You have a good memory. Murray does seem to say that on p 70: “The most comprehensive modern surveys of the use of tests for hiring, promotion, and licensing, in civilian, military, private, and government occupations, repeatedly point to three conclusions about worker performance, as follows:

1) Job training and job peformance in many common occupationsare well predicted by any broadly based test of intelligence, as compared to narrower tests more specifically targeted to the routines of the job. As a corollary: Narrower tests that predict well do so largely because they happen themselves to be correlated with tests of general cognitive ability…”

If so, the WSJ headline writers failed to capture that nuance.

Now, I don’t know, but doesn’t Murray also argue that the graduates from college are, on average, smarter than non graduates? And aren’t the graduates of prestigious colleges smarter, on average, than graduates from lesser-known, less respected colleges?

Though a college degree is an imperfect indicator of intelligence, it is the closest, legally permissible test of IQ for which an employer is allowed to vet. So, if IQ trumps job aptitude (for most job openings), and since a college degree is a decent indicator of IQ, isn’t it just easier to rely on traditional credentials (for most professions)?

In Murray’s vision K-12 would cover the liberal arts and civic education. Clearly that is not being done adequately now, but could K-12 do it if there were significant reform?

And I don’t think Murray is opposed to a liberal arts college experience. He is just arguing that that experience should not be required to enter the professions or skilled occupations. People with wealth may want to indulge road trips with Ashton Kutcher or studying the Classics, but requiring that experience of the poor excludes them from the upward mobility of higher paying occupations.

Murder with statistics – the perfect crime!

I might also get a little Jeffersonian and argue that a liberal arts education – what possibly most universities are charged with delivering (I’m sure Jay will murder me with statistics if I’m wrong here, which is totally fine) – needs some time and exploration and yes, inefficiency. How will one discover, say, the Classics or Renaissance art if not with the relative intellectual freedom afforded in college? Perhaps that’s not important, or perhaps in Murray’s utopia the K-12 system accomplishes all that.

You should be asking not “who wants to be the first one to deny himself the college experience?” but “who wants to be the first one to deny his daughter the college experience?”

Bet you’d get a lot of takers.

I would hate to have been his freshman roommate, I’ll tell you that.

Even if we can all agree that this is a great idea, who wants to be the first one to deny themselves “the college experience”? If Murray could get both a time machine and God-like powers, and goes back in time to when I was in college and gave me the choice to pick between my inefficient four year degree and taking a few certificate tests, ten times out of ten I’ll tell you what I’m going to pick. I’ll leave Murray teary-eyed at the Kaplan testing center to go lounge on the Quad.

Seriously though, this won’t fly for the reasons you cogently argued, ones in my screed above, and a host of others.