Many times on this blog I have claimed that the correlation between IQ and years of educations (indeed IQ and academic success in general) is 0.65. I have based many arguments on this figure which I had assumed was correct since it came from none other than the late great Arthur Jensen who cited it on page 279 of his 1998 book The g Factor. Well it turns out the figure is no longer true, and hasn’t been true for at least several decades. The standardization sample of adults (age 25+) on the WAIS-III revealed the correlation between full-scale IQ and years of education has sunk to 0.55. It seems back in the 1950s, when the first WAIS was standardized, the correlation between IQ and years of education was about 0.7, but by 1978, when the revised WAIS was normed, it had already sunk to the mid 0.5s.
This may not seem like a big difference, but imagine people who average more education than 99.5% of America (i.e. PhDs today) and people who average less education than 99.5% of Americans (8th grade dropouts?). These groups theoretically differ by 5 standard deviations in education, so if the correlation between IQ and education were still 0.7, they would in theory differ by 0.7(5 SD) = 3.5 SD in IQ (54 IQ points!). Instead, with a correlation of 0.55, they differ by “only” 0.55(5 SD) = 2.75 SD (43 IQ points!).
So what’s happening is academic elites have becomes dumber, and academic failures have becoming smarter (relative to the U.S. population average).
This is the exact opposite of what we were told by the book the The Bell Curve which argued that society was becoming more and more stratified by cognitive ability. But it seems with respect to education, we’ve become cognitively less stratified.
This is consistent with data suggesting that the average IQ at Harvard is “only” around 122. Don’t get me wrong, 122 is a very high IQ, and much higher than the U.S. average of 97, and the World average of 90. But you’d expect students at the most prestigious university on the face of the planet to be at least Mensa level (IQ 128+). The fact that they may “only” average 122, is consistent with IQ and academic success no longer being strongly linked.
Why is this happening? I can think of two possible reasons (both speculative):
1) IQ tests are getting more accurate. In the past IQ tests were biased in favour of educated people, but as psychologists improved the test administration so that even high school dropouts and illiterates could understand the instructions, the tests became more fair to everyone, and the gap in test scores between the educated and uneducated shrunk. In other words, the link between IQ and academic success was spuriously high in the past, and more accurate testing has now corrected the error.
2) Getting educated is no longer the smartest thing to do. In the past, the best way to get rich was to become a doctor or a lawyer or join some other overeducated profession. But with the explosion of income inequality, even college dropouts can start a business and become a hundred times richer than most lawyers. Since smart people understand the value of money and can figure out where to get it, many high IQ people decided to skip college and gamble on their own business, causing the correlation between IQ and education to drop.
Pumpkin Person 
#3 explanation: In the United States, everyone is pushed to get a college degree regardless of ability. Thus, make-work degree programs in areas like Fine Arts and Interdisciplinary studies are invented to absorb all of these students, despite the fact they teach no real skills. Loans are offered to these sub-par students so they can attend school, and affirmative action is implemented to bring in sub-par minority students. Of course, affirmative action has major impacts even at fairly prestigious schools like Harvard. Then these students leave school and still can’t get jobs despite accumulating tons of education.
As you alluded to somewhat in point 2, some smart people see through the bullshit of the education bubble and choose not to go as far as possible in school, or they skip school altogether. Dumber people still think school is the pathway to riches and life success so they rack up worthless degrees in worthless fields of study.
If you control for major, the correlation between years of education and IQ probably go up significantly.
On point two, because the world is much more selective about workers, only the smartest will work hardest to get conspicuous STEM degrees and mbas. They are the only ones to see their incomes increase year after year. Gates and zuckerberg are exceptions, not the general trend.
Learning how to game the system is important and most have little idea how to do it. Calling college bs signals arrogance, not high iq.
I think we basically agree. Degrees don’t = knowledge, they’re just a signal that someone knows how to game the system…
Except that degrees no longer = a job any longer. Because a lot of non-STEM degrees are worthless. So the system gamer gets gamed…
Slaving away at a job, even one with high income is considered low status in today’s world, when money doesn’t buy you anything exceptional. I rather make good use of my time. Technology has been the dark horse game changer.
Working hard is for chumps, and working at a job that is not even remotely interesting is also for chumps.
There are only 2 regions of the world where high IQ people slave themselves to death for a paycheck. America and East Asia.
shut up lazy ass latino
Slave is revolted!! 😉
Judah-sphere, good point! The increasingly egalitarian culture may have minimized the education gap between the bright & dull, thus diminishing the IQ-education correlation.
PUMPKIN, IN THEORY IF A CHIMPS HAD AN IQ OF 100 WOULD HE BE THE MASTER OF THE WORLD BECAUSE OF HIS SPECIALIZED ABILITIES WHICH WOULD BE SUPERAMPLIFIED ? LIKE HE WOULD BE SUPER STRONG AND SUPER FAST AT DOING A BUNCH OF THINGS…
I feel like success in school curriculum is becoming increasingly less linked to IQ and more linked to conformity, following the rules, putting in an effort (or the right kind of effort), etc. In my experience in secondary schools it seems like it’s always been an explicit goal to make innate intelligence as unimportant as possible with respect to student outcomes. This helps people of mediocre intelligence graduate but may also give intelligent lower-class students less a chance to distinguish themselves, and above all give an advantage to higher-class students with the right cultural background to do the “right” things to do the best in schooling.
exactly right in America and even more Canada.
test only admissions, hiring, preferment, etc. can make a class system less rigid or more rigid.
the abandonment of the 11+ exams in the UK has made the British class system MORE rigid.
the US is an example of schizophrenia at the level of an entire country. the US has the most rigid class system in the developed world yet its “official ideology” denies there is any such thing.
the American dream is alive, it’s just not in America. it’s in Canada and Germany and Australia, etc.
the ideal is that the “means of selection” and of “de-selection” are as objective as possible. whatever the means, they will be imperfect. but if they aren’t objective there’s no way to make them better. if you can’t measure it, you can’t change it.
the absurdly unequal consequences of selection/de-selection are the problem.
this CANNOT be justified merely by improving the means of selection.
harvard has too few blacks or latinos?
NO!
an institution like harvard shouldn’t be allowed to exist in a democracy.
Obama, on the prison population:
“There but for the grace of God,” Mr. Obama said after his tour. “And that is something we all have to think about.”
and it’s true. in Scandinavia many prisons are what many in America would consider luxurious. And that sentiment probably explains why.
but the fact that Obama seems to understand is enough for cautious optimism.
@PP – I’m glad you have noticed this. It has beenabout fifty years since either the USA or the UK has been a meritocracy even in intention – and nowadays institutionsare not even trying to get the most able person for jobs, promotions, awards, and status – indeed our culture is very explicit that it is better to appoint people on the basis of sex, race, sexuality or whatever – than in terms of ability.
Harvard is typical in this respect – it admit about half or more women, when any elite intellectual institution would expect to admit mostly men – because there is a much higher proportion of men at the top of the Bell Curve.
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/do-elite-us-colleges-choose-personality.html
About 15 percent of admissions are set aside for affirmative action – so they are not even trying to choose the best people for those slots. Then there are legacies; and then there is the active documented prejudice among admissions administrators against people with right wing/ republican views (OTC members etc). There is also evidence of quotas against Asians at some elite institutions – eg Berkeley, so I expect Harvard would be similar. Of course, that still leaves space for quite a lot of very high IQ people among those chosen on merit – but these are very substantially diluted.
Whatever kind of elite institution Harvard is, it is not an IQ elite. What is interesting is whether any othere Universities are better – and I would say yes – almost certainly MIT will be much higher average IQ. MIT is also by far and away the best university in the world for major science work resulting in awards like Nobels and the equivalent (MIT alone does better than the whole of the UK).
I did the analyses for this stuffa few years ago:
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2007/07/nflt-metric-for-revoutionary-science.html
BTW – In addition to the above – IQ tests have probably got worse, not better – in the sense of being less good at measuring g then they used to be – the Flynn Effect is a part of this – iwith nflation of non-g IQ score elements, when the g-loaded elements of the IQ score are flat or declining (and underlying general intelligence has been declining).