Degrees and Dollars – NYTimes.com

 

Degrees and Dollars – NYTimes.com

For those of you keeping score at home, Paul Krugman ran a piece on Sunday that lends credence to Gary Becker’s much earlier study showing that the more education a person receives, the lower that person’s salary will be relative to the cost of their education. Interestingly enough, this research also may support Thorstein Veblen’s theory that those who pursue prestige degrees at prestigious institutions not in order to acquire wealth or knowledge, but rather because they come from wealth and knowledge already and because they need to maintain and enhance that power and knowledge. This would suggest that newcomers enter these institutions in the hope of obtaining the cultural capital that will convey power and knowledge to them and their heirs. Education does not so much create wealth as much as it signifies wealth already created.

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