While education remains a crucial element for economic mobility in America, our higher education system struggles to prepare students to pursue their life goals or to enter the workforce in an efficient manner. Does higher education actually impart critical knowledge and skills, or are we spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually to offer nothing more than an expensive signaling device? As more and more Americans take on debt to finance a four-year degree that too often fails to prepare them for the future, policymakers and students alike must consider if the current structure of higher education is truly a good deal for students and taxpayers.

To examine this question in greater detail, Bryan Caplan will discuss his new book, The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money, in which he argues that our education system mostly serves as a very costly and time consuming signal to employers, while failing to significantly strengthen the skills and knowledge of most students.