Kevin Drum looks at some research with which I’m familiar and writes:

Standard economic theory predicts that this should lead to way more people getting college degrees, but that hasn’t happened. Altonji, Bharadwaj and Lange report that, when various socioeconomic factors are held constant, “the supply response to the increase in skill premia between cohorts was small: about 1% on average and about 1.5% at the median.” In other words, kids aren’t bothering to increase their skills very much even though the reward for doing so has skyrocketed.

He then goes on to speculate about why this is the case, wondering whether the slow growth of college wages has helped to reduce the behavioral response, for psychological reasons.

Well, maybe. But I think it’s more important to look at what the rest of that paper said. As it turns out, overall skill levels did increase between the two periods examined, but the increase was almost entirely due to an increase in parental skill levels. More educated parents have more educated kids. The number of highly educated parents rose between the periods examined, and so skill levels rose.

Kevin links to a Brad DeLong post, in which he addresses some of the issues involved before launching into an interesting discussion about what “the rules” of the success game might say about these factors. He writes:

Back in imperial China, if your parents could afford it…

And then continues on. But there’s no real need to continue on. The luck of the parental draw isn’t everything, but it is a lot of things. Childhood, and especially early childhood, is when you’re exposed to all kinds of behavioral patterns that will shape your actions for the rest of your life. It’s when you’re exposed to language and math or not exposed to it, as the case may be, thereby laying the groundwork for later intellectual achievement. Many deficiencies in these areas are identifiable by the time children arrive at school, and while they seem to be fixable in many cases with the right resources, we don’t often make the right resources available. Where and to whom you’re born is incredibly important.

But this should be common sense. I didn’t go to college because I compared potential wages and made a rational decision. At the time I applied to go to school, I had no idea what I wanted to do, and my conception of what different professions paid was wildly off base in any case. I was in no position to make an informed decision about how best to invest in my own education.

I went to college for three reasons. First, I had a vague sense that I wanted to be really successful and it seemed that successful people went to college. Second, my parents made certain that there was never any doubt about whether or not I was going to college–I was going to college. And third, the teachers and administrators in my life made clear that the grades and scores I earned were those associated with somebody who went to college. Essentially, college was what came next, as far as I could tell, and the grades I’d earned put me in a position where the institutions around me were committed to getting me there.

So yes, there are issues about what young people perceive success to be and what they think they should be doing, but these are small things. The big thing is to create a system that ensures that capable young people are getting the instruction they need and are guided to college. That means universal pre-K, it means ample resources available for remedial efforts, and it means addressing the time and financial constraints of lower income and single parents.

Kids don’t get themselves into college, for the most part, and thank god. If that were the case, no one would go. The environment around kids, and especially the parents, gets kids into college. So let’s stop wondering why teenagers aren’t acting rationally and investing for the long-term and using cost-benefit analysis and begin addressing the real educational needs in our society.