"What a College Education Buys"

After reading the article “What a College Education Buys” by Christopher Caldwell, I saw a correlation between this article and Friedman’s third convergence.

For Americans, college is “more important that peace in the Middle East” (Caldwell 1). However, in Caldwell’s article, he is saying that Americans try to force the youth to go to college for the wrong reasons. This article illustrates that that American college education is used as a “marriage broker” and “leisure time”(Caldwell 1). According to Caldwell, “a college degree is partly a ‘signaling’ device—it shows not that its holder has learned something but rather that he is the kind of person who could learn something”(Caldwell 2). However, Caldwell thinks that a college education could be “overstated”(Caldwell 2). For example, “the employees who built […] Google in it early stages could never have been trained to do so, because neither the company not the idea existed” (Caldwell 2). Many people view an American college degree as just a “formation.” It does not qualify the student to do anything in particular.

I think that Friedman would agree that Americans are not choosing academic degrees that will benefit them in the 3.0 flat world. For example, during Friedman’s discussion of the third convergence, he describes Indian education. In India, “Most […] students are studying business, math, or computer science”(214). Even though India has a long way to go to become as advanced as the United States, the people there are “hungry” to compete in the 3.0 flat world. I think that Friedman would agree that sometimes education cannot prepare you for something that doesn’t yet exist, like Google, but wee must take 3.0 into consideration. When students go to college, they should become well rounded, but they should also choose a degree program that will make them marketable for the 3.0 flat world.