Last week Charles Murray made an innovative and provocative proposal in the Wall Street Journal: Let’s not make the college B.A. the standard training for all professions and higher-skill occupations. Instead, let’s increasingly use certification tests, like the CPA for accountants, to indicate whether people are qualified for certain jobs. People could prepare for those tests by taking classes from traditional colleges, by taking courses on-line, by studying on their own in the neighborhood library, or in any other way they want. Expanding the paths by which people could enter high-paying occupations expands equality of opportunity by reducing the financial and logistical barriers that requiring a college B.A. imposes. And focusing career-oriented training on the skills required for that career and removing other requirements improves the efficiency of that training.
In this scenario we would have to rely on the K-12 system to provide the basic liberal arts training and civic education we think all people need to be productive citizens. Post-secondary education would be more focused on career training except for the relatively few people who really want further liberal arts training or additional preparation in a traditional academic field.
Expanding equality of opportunity and improving the efficiency of post-secondary education make Murray’s proposal very appealing. So appealing that one has to ask why we aren’t already doing it. The government does not mandate that employers of professionals and high-skilled occupations require a college B.A. — at least not directly. Why do employers require something that limits the pool of qualified labor from which they could hire and consumes considerably more time and resources than the certification test approach Murray suggests? If Murray’s proposal is on target, shouldn’t employers already be developing and using certification tests in lieu of the B.A., at least for certain occupations?
There are several reasons why Murray’s vision is not the current reality. First, developing appropriate certification tests for a number of high-skill occupations may not be as easy as Murray suggests. Perhaps many employers have not switched from the B.A. model because they don’t think they can meaningfully improve upon it.
Second, employers and private associations that develop and use certification tests would likely face a flood of employment discrimination lawsuits that challenged the validity of the test. I am no lawyer (nor do I play one on TV), but I suspect that fear of litigation plays a large role in deterring employers from relying on private certification tests for hiring.
Third, much of what employers want from their employees (at least in some occupations) is the self-discipline and obedience to authority necessary for completing assigned tasks. Perhaps employers don’t care too much about what prospective employees do in college as long as they have to complete a long list of assigned tasks demonstrating self-discipline and compliance. College selects and cultivates these desired traits.
Fourth, even if employers just want to use college as a liability-free way to screen for self-discipline and compliance, it is clear that this is a very inefficient arrangement from a societal perspective. It would be much more efficient to have employers hire crowds of interns/apprentices at low wages and only keep the most skilled, self-disciplined, and compliant as long-term employees. While this may be more efficient from a societal perspective, it is far less efficient from the perspective of individual employers. If they had to sort and train a crowd of prospective employees as interns/apprentices, employers would have to bear the costs that students and taxpayers currently bear in paying colleges to perform these roles. And having to dump a large number of interns/apprentices who didn’t make the cut would invite another flood of employment discrimination lawsuits.
Murray’s vision has much appeal, but there are also significant barriers to its implementation. Unless we address those barriers, especially liability issues related to employment, we are unlikely to realize the benefits of expanding equality of opportunity and reducing costs from Murray’s proposal. There are also practical barriers, like the difficulty of testing for certain skills and traits, that limit the benefits that could be realized. But we could still take steps toward what Murray has suggested and think about how those ideas could shape reform within the post-secondary education world.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
One insurmountable reason why this idea will not only never fly, but also never be considered: college is a lot of fun. I mean, come on, how many movies do they make about college hijinks? Does Murray really think people are going to start making movies with Ashton Kutcher getting into mischief on his way to getting his mathematics certification, or a bunch of young co-eds getting murdered by a deranged CPA exam proctor? I’m guessing Murray doesn’t get out much.
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.
But the people who “benefit” from the Animal House experience, if you want to call it a benefit, are not the same people who pay for that experience.
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’m not so sure. I’ve wondered for a long time why there is so much nonsense taught and inefficiency in the delivery of higher ed. Some of the problem is that the people paying (parents and taxpayers) are usually different from the person receiving the service. But I think it is also possible that parents and students, especially wealthier parents and students, actually want the nonsense and inefficiency. It’s like taking a summer trip around Europe. They think it is a broadening experience and they don’t want too many intellectual demands or an accelerated schedule to stand in the way.
I agree with Jay half way. I was obviously being tongue and cheek earlier, but I would rather pay for my child’s college education than have them take a test that would guarantee the same economic/status outcomes. I want my child (as I wanted and accomplished for myself) to have an intellectually rigorous college experience, to challenge himself/herself, but I recognize the large social benefits of the college experience. I suspect Jay is right that some (many? most?) parents and students want some of the “nonsense and inefficiency.”
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.
Right, right – Murray sidesteps the question of whether college provides benefits other than job skills that are of interest to more than just the small number of people destined to be intellectuals.
Murder with statistics – the perfect crime!
I think we are all mostly in agreement.
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.
I don’t have my copy of the Bell Curve handy, but I think – somewhere around the beginning of Section II – Murray states that IQ tests are a better predictor of job performance than are aptitude tests tailored specifically for the profession. Tests for highly technical professions (accounting, computer programming, etc.) may prove to be exceptions, but most people – and most college graduates – do not end up working in highly technical professions.
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)?
Jay: ” I don’t think Murray is opposed to a liberal arts college experience.”
If so, the WSJ headline writers failed to capture that nuance.
Collin,
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…”
A movie was made about Ashton Kutcher losing his car. I think a movie about him losing his car on his way to mathematics certification is certainly possible….sounds like fun.
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!!