Gary Becker vs. Paul Krugman On Education

See Are Too Many Young People Going to College? by Becker. Excerpts:

"This brings me to Paul Krugman’s analysis that Posner commented on. I agree with Krugman that not everyone in the United States or elsewhere will benefit from a college education, but the United States and pretty much all other countries are very far from that extreme. However, if Krugman were correct that software was replacing college educated persons on a large scale, that high wage jobs have been more “offshorable” than jobs done by the low-paid, and that college education is becoming less helpful in finding good jobs, then surely during recent years the earnings gains of college graduates should already have begun to fall behind the gains of less educated persons.

Yet since the early 1990s and even during the last decade, the facts are the opposite: the average earnings premiums of college graduates in the US, and especially the premiums of persons with a post-graduate education, have continued to increase, despite the growth in the numbers of educated persons in the labor force (this evidence can be found in “Explaining the Worldwide Boom in the Higher Education of Women” by Gary Becker, William Hubbard, and Kevin Murphy, The Journal of Human Capital, Fall 2010). So the most recent trends in the earnings of college graduates do not support the view that the US is overeducating its labor force."

"Part of the American problem results from the high dropout rates from high school, including in the dropout rate students who only get a High School Equivalency Degree (GED). These dropout rates have remained stable at about 25% of all high school students, a depressing figure relative to those in other developed countries, where dropout rates are usually below 10%. The students who are dropping out do not get good jobs since the evidence is overwhelming that the pay of dropouts is very low, and their unemployment rates are very high. Not much support in these data for any “hollowing out” of job opportunities alluded to by Krugman. Especially disturbing is that African-Americans and other minorities are vastly over represented among those dropping out of high school.

So my conclusion is that America will benefit greatly from increasing the numbers of young men and women who go to and graduate from colleges and universities."