In Nassim Taleb’s book, The Black Swan, the author confidently assures his readers that, to learn anything, one must “minimize time spent reading newspapers,” and “ignore the blogs.” He argues that these outlets always try to apply narratives to what simply may be disparate facts, usually report the same sets of facts, are prone to hyperbole, and seldom correct mistakes that they make with alarming regularity.

Similarly, Nate Silver’s new book, The Signal and the Noise, warns us against relying on experts, whose predictions come about with the same regularity as if foreseen by laypeople—and are often less accurate.

[pullquote]The media also fails spectacularly in its chief goal of … reporting news.[/pullquote]

It is not difficult to see that Taleb and Silver are correct. The news media pretends to know things that are essentially unknowable. We will never know Mitt Romney and Barack Obama on a personal level, no matter how many articles are written about them. Likewise, we cannot accurately predict how the polls will turn in the upcoming weeks. We do not know for sure if Justin Trudeau will eventually ascend to the head of the Liberal Party, and if he does so, how successful he will be. We must deal with the fact that our thoughts on these issues are hardly based in anything substantive, and are often nothing more than conjectures.

The media also fails spectacularly in its chief goal of actually reporting news: remember when Osama Bin Laden was reported killed in a firefight, or the Innocence of Muslims was reliably reported as the sole cause of the deaths in the American Embassy in Libya? When swine flu was posited as capable of decimating huge swaths of the population? When new sources reported that Candidate X committed (insert gaffe), only to state hours later that the gaffe was unreasonably exaggerated?

These news organizations can argue that they are doing the best with the information they have at the time. However, this limited defense is undercut by the fact that the media presupposes there is virtue in pretending to be authoritative with limited facts. In actuality, it is doing little service to the public with its presentation of wildly misleading views.

So how do we avoid falling into the trap of listening to news that is most likely wrong, and predictions that are apt to fail? Taleb suggests reading books and media that have stood the test of time, increasing the likelihood that the information we are consuming is largely accurate.

One should also be aware of the cognitive failings to which humans are prone, such as applying narratives to nearly every aspect of our lives. Silver suggests that we act on the basis of probabilistic hypotheses, and then revise them after the truth or falsity of our actions slowly become known.

We can also start to react to the news in a more measured manner, taking everything that commentators say with a grain of salt, knowing that what they say is probably not complete and may need to be amended later. None of these things in themselves are sufficient in providing us with clarity of knowledge. Ultimately though, these small steps—relying on established forms of media, expecting future revision of all facts, and seeking out bias in narrative—are the best tools we may ever have to separate hasty conclusions from prediction based in fact.

Over the past few years, there has been an intensifying debate over the role of university education—whether universities are institutions of pure learning, or simply a place to acquire a credential after completing a certain amount of coursework. Though the topic has generated a fair amount of discussion about what universities should do to motivate learning, most of the talk about it actually misses the point. Because higher education allows—and requires—more individual choice than primary or secondary education, what really matters to this debate over learning and motivation is the individual student.

In his 2002 piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled “The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation,” Alfie Kohn argues that the entire debate over the issue of grade inflation reveals an inherent problem with grading systems at universities.  These grading scales make students focus more on the number they receive at the end of the term than the material they were supposed to be absorbing in class. Kohn proposes completely eliminating grades, allowing students to focus on the actual course material.

This “no grades” philosophy prompts the inevitable question: how, then, can we determine whether students are learning? How much was understood at the end of class compared to the beginning? Even if we assume that these concerns are valid, there remains a major tension in the “do away with grades” argument in the realm of higher education.

This is an age of easily-accessible knowledge, with full and free courses offered online by institutions like MIT and Harvard. Now that world-class institutions are making their educational material freely available online, those who want to take time off and learn without the pressure to compete for a number can do so. The movement to bring this philosophy of grade-free education to large universities, then, reflects an implicit acceptance of the importance of the degree as a “credential” certifying learning.

Some economists suggest that university completion—with a satisfactory transcript—is actually a signaling mechanism. The actual gain in hard, quantifiable “skills” (e.g. critical and analytical thinking), among university graduates is generally small. Rather, students attend university to “signal” to an employer that they were already competent in these skills—the GPA signaling their degree of competence. As economist Bryan Caplan asks, “Which would do more for your career: A Princeton education, but no diploma, or a Princeton diploma, but no education?” Signaling theorists would say the latter.

Several prominent universities, such as Hampshire College, have switched to a “narrative” method of evaluation. Instead of a numerical GPA, instructors write an evaluation of what the course was supposed to accomplish, how well the individual accomplished those tasks, and perhaps whether the student improved over the semester.  Other universities supplement their GPAs with a similar evaluation. Upon considering both of these views, what becomes apparent is that the major factor in this equation is not the university, or employers, or even the post-secondary education system, but rather the individual.

Though a cliché, one gets out of anything what one puts into it, and this happens to be especially true in the case of higher education. Many university students choose to focus simply on their attractiveness to employers, while the choice to go to an institution focused on tests, or one with narrative evaluations, is a personal one. So is the choice of one’s classes. Debating what universities should do with grading systems misses the point, because education at university is driven by the choices of the individual. Therefore, to wring one’s hands about unmotivated students at major universities would point to a problem with their mindset, not with the grading system.