Instead of intensifying the social division of labor in terms of education and intellectual endeavors, universal education dumbs down the content & concepts of its courses in order to be 'all-inclusive.'
In the free market, folks tend to find themselves in places where their needs and wants are best met, that is, where they can obtain the most resources while at the same time enjoying the greatest psychic benefit. The only way, short of theft and thievery (which is inherently discouraged in the market), that man can provide for his wants is to serve others in exchange relationships. Man realizes that if he is to maximize his wealth, it is in his interest to do that which society values most. Man will also take into account the disutility of labor, and through his judgment man will weigh such disutility in light of the gain to be made through the providing of wants of others. Only men on the individual level can pursue and obtain the right mix of these two factors in order to maximize their overall psychic benefit, because only they truly know what makes themselves happy.
Even in the hampered market we live in, we see the division of labor at work every day. College kids choose a major to their liking while at the same time weighing the incomes associated with their choices; Steve Jobs, excellent at entrepreneurship, makes great products that others can only dream about doing; Brett Favre and Drew Brees are quarterbacks for the NFL, as opposed to investment bankers and limo drivers; people with high time preferences and little resolve to acquire an advanced education tend to find themselves in entry level positions, such as restaurant cooks and ditch diggers, where they balance their own disutility of labor in the form of studying and specializing in a specific field against their desire for income and wealth. Even in the absence of state planning, everybody kind of goes where they not only want to go but also where they are best suited to go, relative to the desires of everybody else. I don't want Brett Farve managing my finances and I sure as hell don't want my coworkers at the restaurant operating on my heart and prescribing my Dad's medications.
Enter compulsory education, mandated by the State. People who have no desire to educate their minds, must. People who have not the ability to make anything of a formal education, must still go through the motions, even though it benefits nobody except those that derive a psychic income from the knowledge that 'society is smart.' Instead of folks entering the workforce at age 10, providing for others goods and services that they desire, and moreover finding out what they are best at doing at an early age and then specializing in that field, they must delay their talents and skills. People who otherwise would have been brilliant landscapers, excellent mom-and-pop store managers, shrewd investors and ingenious inventors are likely stuck in the theoretical mathematics department at a small college, or are integrated into a political machine vying for power, or were disenchanted with the whole process and now produce bastard children. Anecdotal hyperbole, but very real. But this is the paradox: what was supposed to produce more geniuses, a generally better-educated populace, and at the very least a literate body of citizens is failing to do so, and this failure is inherent in the very nature of compulsory education.
Imagine compulsory swim teams and running squads: Few individuals are biologically capable of such activities. If participation in these sports were mandated and forced upon a population, any standards currently in place for those who run because of innate ability or the sheer will to do so would ipso-facto have to fall in intensity in order to produce an acceptable 'pass rate.' That is, the quality of runners as a whole would fall relative to what it would have been. This has to happen or else the program is exposed as the fraud it is because half or more of all entrants are failing out. The resources dedicated to bring everybody up to the level of the 'ideal runner' are being wasted, and instead are producing something else that nobody not only intended to produce, but didn't want in the first place.
Ivy league institutions and gifted programs prove far too much. The reason for their existence underlines the fact that not everybody, and in fact very few individuals on earth, are capable of the intense intellectual division of labor called scholarly education. These institutions are in fact outgrowths of the division of labor, whereas mandatory public schools and community and public colleges, financed by taxpayer compulsion, are physical manifestations of the revolt against intellectual specialization. Granted, even Ivy league schools are funded by the taxpayer, they are still given sizable grants by private individuals, far more than are generally public institutions. If this is not enough, look no further than at the scholars at think tanks such as the Mises Institute, which is provided for solely by donor contributions and product sales, and produces outstanding work, judged so by its customers.
You can well guess what the state of education would look like in a free market. Think a lot less grade schools and 2- and 4-year universities, and a lot more specialized institutions with extremely stringent requirements, funded by donor contributions and corporate support. Indeed, why would customers of failing school systems continue to shell out dollars for those students who have no interest in learning, and more so for students who will not apply anything he learned to the practical world after schooling? The fact that education is at current compulsory proves this feature of a free market.
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