Murray’s Morons

A conservative “scholar” wants to keep students out of college.

By Niral Shah, Dartmouth College

Charles Murray would rather you didn’t go to college. It probably won’t prepare you for any occupation, and, odds are, you’re not smart enough to benefit from a college education anyway. You shouldn’t feel bad – you were born this way. And those lucky few who form the cognitive elite? Well, their “spread of wealth at the top of American society has created an explosive increase in the demand for craftsmen.” So drop those books and grab your hammer. You’ll be just fine, and society will be saved from its futile attempts to make you any smarter.

But Charles Murray probably isn’t worth listening to. A senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Murray became infamous as co-author of The Bell Curve, a controversial work of pseudo-scientific racism published in 1993. The book argued that IQ is the strongest and most consistent predictor of future success, that intelligence is largely inherited, and that low-intelligence is especially prevalent among African-Americans. Trusting that mathematically-derived psychometrics were objective and above scrutiny, with journalists lacking the expertise to prove otherwise, mainstream publications treated the book relatively uncritically. Murray made the supporting evidence for this research available only after most of the outrage died down By the time The Bell Curve was thoroughlydiscredited for its logical fallacies and simple errors, the damage had been done.

Last month, in a three-part editorial series in the Wall Street Journal (1, 2, 3), Murray attempted to re-enter the intelligence and education debate. He repackages “The Bell Curve,” but with subtler racial implications. He believes that social ills are common among the poorly educated, but that the “culprit for their low educational deficit is often low intelligence,” not an ineffective or unjust education system. Murray expounds on the importance of IQ, claiming that a college education is beyond the abilities of the vast majority, and that vocational training is a sufficiently lucrative and appealing alternative.

As if to prove himself either too disingenuous or too stupid to properly use statistics, Murray opens with the shocking revelation that “half of all children are below average in intelligence.” In fact, as with any median (especially in the case of IQ tests, which are regularly population-standardized to a median of 100), half the population is always below average by definition. He argues that along the course of education, high-IQ students may continually improve, but average and lower-IQ students will hit a hard limit earlier on. According to Murray, this limit strictly correlates to IQ, which is largely determined by the inherited component of intelligence.

Consensus holds that some aspect of intelligence is inelastic, but Murray exaggerates and misinterprets the significance of this. Studies have determined that heredity accounts for between 40 and 80 percent of the variation in intelligence between individuals, and that intelligence is a small factor in the complex relationship between IQ, parental socioeconomic status, and adult income. Indeed, research suggests that low IQ scores among low-income people are due mostly to environmental factors. And as a measure of general intelligence, a given IQ level does not correspond to a specific achievement level. Abilities can differ depending on the subject matter at hand. Murray claims there is no genuine IQ-qualification for a college education, but then tosses out the number 120 anyway, which would cut off 85 percent of Americans. It doesn’t occur to him that people may study subjects according to their abilities—that an ability to handle complex mathematics does not guarantee literary prowess and vice-versa. If such a hard limit exists, how could it be definitively identified?

He offers that some public schools may be dreadful, but is otherwise convinced that education reform is not going to change the disparate achievement among students. As proof, Murray notes that in one standardized exam, 36 percent of fourth-graders scored below the “basic achievement” level in reading, and that the same percentage of students have an IQ below 95. If Murray had his way, we’d stop wasting our time on these tragically deficient fourth-graders. But these matching numbers are just an arbitrary mathematical sleight-of-hand. They don’t demonstrate a precise correlation between reading ability and intelligence, and give no indication of the efficacy of any educational interventions.

Unconcerned with the potential risks of misjudging or underestimating a student’s capacity, Murray insists that we should face the harsh realities of genetics. But this resigned mentality is itself an obstacle to education. In a seminal psychology study, students were randomly distributed into two classrooms, with one teacher being told the students were of average intelligence, the other being told they were gifted. This latter group showed significantly more progress in learning over the course of a year. If something as subtle as teacher-expectations could so drastically alter educational outcomes, what must that imply for the myriad factors of race, socio-economics, teaching methods, and resources that shape classroom environments? For Murray, genetics is the reason for bad education, crime, violence, and unemployment, and nothing is going to change.

Fundamentally, Murray misunderstands both the purpose of a college education and the American job market. He argues that college degrees, except for the few that are essentially vocational (i.e. engineering), are useful merely as “screening devices” of one’s ability to get into and stay in college. Vocational schools, he says, are a “better, faster, and more efficient way for young people to acquire credentials to provide to employers.” And the wealth of “the cognitive elite” will generate a higher demand for vocational skills, making these occupations more appealing and college less important.

But as people continually seek out better options and new opportunities, they often land in professions they could not have anticipated pursuing. The average worker changes jobs 10 times over his or her career. Students pursue a college education because it allows the development of one’s abilities and interests and provides an avenue for upward mobility. Supplementing vocational studies like accounting and finance with a liberal arts education broadens future options, and the curricula of four-year institutions reflect this fact.

The result of this process is economically optimal for workers and employers. Murray’s antiquated notion of “journey craftsmen” ignores that the American job market is stratifying between knowledge jobs that require critical thinking skills and service sector employment. In our post-industrial economy, education is rewarded far more than vocational skills. Americans can expect an increase in lifetime income of approximately $1 million with each successive college, graduate, and post-graduate degree. For many of them, the major deterrent to pursuing higher education is high tuition costs.

Murray ’s last point is that we stop squandering resources on this nation’s legions of dullards and re-allocate them towards the geniuses. For Murray, the struggle against inequality is futile, so we must triage our precious resources and focus on the select few, not just embracing the status quo, but seeking to exacerbate it. Presumably Murray considers himself among the 15 percent of Americans most deserving of an elite education—in his case it was a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. from M.I.T . Too bad he put his education to such poor use.

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