College degrees and US Government: NYT opinion piece

[polly_mer]

Five years ago, Nicholas Carnes, a political scientist at Duke, tried to measure whether more formal education made political leaders better at their jobs. After conducting a sweeping review of 228 countries between the years 1875 and 2004, he and a colleague concluded: No. It did not. A college education did not mean less inequality, a greater G.D.P., fewer labor strikes, lower unemployment or less military conflict.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/opinion/politicians-college-degrees.html

[marshwiggle]

Five years ago, Nicholas Carnes, a political scientist at Duke, tried to measure whether more formal education made political leaders better at their jobs. After conducting a sweeping review of 228 countries between the years 1875 and 2004, he and a colleague concluded: No. It did not. A college education did not mean less inequality, a greater G.D.P., fewer labor strikes, lower unemployment or less military conflict.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/opinion/politicians-college-degrees.html

Education does not automatically produce character, which would likely show a much bigger positive correlation with effectiveness.

[Hibush]

Five years ago, Nicholas Carnes, a political scientist at Duke, tried to measure whether more formal education made political leaders better at their jobs. After conducting a sweeping review of 228 countries between the years 1875 and 2004, he and a colleague concluded: No. It did not. A college education did not mean less inequality, a greater G.D.P., fewer labor strikes, lower unemployment or less military conflict.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/opinion/politicians-college-degrees.html

Education does not automatically produce character, which would likely show a much bigger positive correlation with effectiveness.

Character is an important driver of the outcome that is independent of college education.

So is checking that the measured outcomes are somehow expected from the presumed causal variable.

Carnes defined "better at their jobs" by specific metrics that I consider good from a values perspective, but not good as a measure of politicians' assessment of their own job performance.

A college education can be helpful if you want to enrich yourself and your friends (by increasing inequality), keep your labor cheap (by keeping unemployment high and generating strikes), and sustain high demand or limit competition for your expensive products (by fomenting armed conflict).

Overall, this argument seems structurally very weak.

[Golazo]

It is unfortunate that the article the NYT times piece is based on is a terrible article. I'm really surprised that this was published in a pretty good journal, given errors like for example extrapolating about education and corruption in the developed world with data from Brazil, and failing to control in the US for variables like partisan variation in a district (if as a Democrat I will by 1% in a R +15 district, I'm either an awesome politician or running against Mark Foley. If I win by 1% in a D +15 district, you can assume something else). I would have given this at best an R&R, and it just goes to show how random peer review can be.

[mythbuster]

I have always said about political positions that anyone smart enough knows that they don't want the job. They know it's hard and thankless and an invitation to have a target on your back.  Unless this study somehow controls for this fact it's useless.

[marshwiggle]

I have always said about political positions that anyone smart enough knows that they don't want the job. They know it's hard and thankless and an invitation to have a target on your back.  Unless this study somehow controls for this fact it's useless.

The fact is that most of the decisions politicians have to make aren't really intellectually complex; they're morally complex. For instance, trading off covid protection versus damage to the economy, mental health, etc. They have advisors with the relevant expertise to provide the information they need, but the policy choice is based on values. Knowing more about how vulnerable a 90 year old is to covid and also knowing more about how stressful total isolation will be for that same individual still leave the same difficult decision to be made.

[Ruralguy]

Realizing that there might be moral grey areas*is* a form of intellectual complexity and critical thinking.

[dismalist]

Five years ago, Nicholas Carnes, a political scientist at Duke, tried to measure whether more formal education made political leaders better at their jobs. After conducting a sweeping review of 228 countries between the years 1875 and 2004, he and a colleague concluded: No. It did not. A college education did not mean less inequality, a greater G.D.P., fewer labor strikes, lower unemployment or less military conflict.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/opinion/politicians-college-degrees.html

The newspaper article is mildly moronic overall. The reference seems like it's asking some wrong questions, at least wrongly.

One item of particular note is that US Congresspeople have law degrees, degrees in duking it out. Not in coalition building, or institutional innovation, or some such. But we can't blame them. They just reflect us.