“‘Million Dollar Degree’ Authors Answer Harper, Leichter,” The Am Law Daily, August 29, 2013.
[UPDATE: I did decide to write a response. Part I can be found here.]
I’ve been eagerly anticipating Simkovic’s and McIntyre’s rebuttal for a while now, and I can say that I’m OUTRAGED that they didn’t give me credit for not “throwing in a few disparaging remarks to boot” as Harper did. How could they have not acknowledged that??
Anyway, I’m on the fence about publishing a rejoinder—not because I don’t expect it to convince the authors or anyone else that proving causation requires eliminating all other potential causes (like signaling, zorpqaq in law schools’ water). No, the problem is that the authors’ response was so frivolous—and, frankly, boring—that it’d waste everyone’s time to put too much effort into it.
On the other hand, I’m starting to think that “labor economics” as the college premium crowd practices it is a pseudoscience. Given any criticism and they ferociously respond that they’re measuring a “premium,” or that the higher average earnings demonstrates the need for higher education “Period,” as Wonkblog said a few days ago. The researchers rarely ever try to investigate what aspects of higher education increases earnings. NO! It’s an irreducible, sacrosanct, black box phenomenon, like the E-meter auditing devices they use in Scientology.
Okay then, I’ll just go out and pay twice as much for a new car that’s the same quality as it would’ve been thirty years ago. No problem there; it’s better than a rickshaw!