What does it mean to say that there has been “education inflation”? It is an analogy to money inflation. Austrians understand money inflation in this way: money substitutes are created that do not represent actual goods and services, (e.g. counterfeiting). So to draw an analogy to education, we might say that education inflation would be the issuing of degrees that do not represent actual learning. Fiat degrees, like fiat money would over time experience a devaluation. This is precisely what we have experienced. There was a time when having a high school degree really meant something. Some older friends were telling me that in the 30s and 40s to be a “college man” marked one out as in a small, select and respected group. Now people with Bachelors’ degrees are a dime a dozen. A Masters or PhD is really ideal to distinguish oneself as educated. But even PhDs (in some fields) seem to be oveproduced. Ironically, the premier example of this is PhDs in Education which are turned out by the boatload and typically signify very little learning.
