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We need a college education to be accessible to anyone who is qualified. That's different from universal higher education. Those signals get crossed a lot.

jseliger 9y ago
We need a college education to be accessible to anyone who is qualified You should read the article: The labor market doesn’t pay you for the useless subjects you master; it pays you for the preexisting traits you signal by mastering them. This is not a fringe idea. Michael Spence, Kenneth Arrow, and Joseph Stiglitz—all Nobel laureates in economics—made seminal contributions to the theory of educational signaling. Every college student who does the least work required to get good grades silently endorses the theory. But signaling plays almost no role in public discourse or policy making. As a society, we continue to push ever larger numbers of students into ever higher levels of education. The main effect is not better jobs or greater skill levels, but a credentialist arms race. If college is mostly about signaling, then it's an arms race, and the faster the herd, the more the individual most race in order to keep up. Accessibility to higher education is important, but much more of that education should be vocational in nature. Right now we have a lot of access to college, but that access has led to ballooning problems with student loans, along with Girard-style mimetic crises ( https://jakeseliger.com/2017/06/27/violence-and-the-sacred-on-campus/ https://jakeseliger.com/2017/06/27/violence-and-the-sacred-o... ).
- SapphireSun 9y ago
  If college is part of a signaling arms race, if we conceive of education purely as a labor market good, why are we asking the laborers to stand down from that race and not the employers?
  - analog31 9y ago
    Indeed, if everybody knows that a college education is empty signaling, then how is it possibly still effective? The best and biggest employers should have the best information on the value of college education (in whole and in terms of its parts, such as humanities courses). They could expand their potential labor pool and make better or cheaper hires by adopting different hiring standards. If there's an information arbitrage going on here, somebody should be able to make money from it. In my view the elephant in the room is that maybe a college education is valuable after all, but we haven't put our finger on the precise reason.
    - cinquemb 9y ago
      >The best and biggest employers should have the best information on the value of college education (in whole and in terms of its parts, such as humanities courses). Depends how one defines "best"; though this is debatable, because one could say that these are the most beholden to the signaling arms race despite the data they may have to the contrary (i.e alphabet, amazon, et al). >In my view the elephant in the room is that maybe a college education is valuable after all, but we haven't put our finger on the precise reason. I don't think this is the elephant in the room at all, people routinely say that some parts of a college education can be valuable for various reasons, while others (as judged by value by the marketability of the graduates) are not valuable at all. In my view, the "best" and biggest employers like it because it signals some default level of competence (which is growing weaker as the incentives are to push everyone through to get some kind of degree) as well as relative malleability and conformance to institutionalized authority (those who opted out, or didn't go might not conform to the corporate identity or end up making it expensive for the employer to employ them, compared to their counter parts; after all, hiring based on objective measurements/metrics without any human involvement isn't something that happens today). Also these companies are largely affected by the turnover rates compared to smaller ones, so it's easier to target colleges graduates as a cohort. >If there's an information arbitrage going on here, somebody should be able to make money from it. I do think some employers take advantage of this environment, though I doubt it's alphabets, amazons, and apples…
    - Trundle 9y ago
      >Indeed, if everybody knows that a college education is empty signaling, then how is it possibly still effective? Who said it's empty? It's effective at finding the employer what they want. Just not efficient on the part of the employee.
  - Trundle 9y ago
    > why are we asking the laborers Who is we? Certainly not the author of the article we're discussing. He specifically talks about recommending going in to higher education to the individual.
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  Accessibility != mandatory (literally the point of my post) Anyone != everyone (literally the point of my post) And "qualified" != anyone who can squeeze out a 20 on the ACT. Certainly far south of 70+%. > labor market doesn’t pay you for the useless subjects you master ...Girard-style mimetic crises Well hell, maybe try less Girard and more Fourier?
Powerofmene 9y ago
And on the flip side, in the states that use lottery funds to provide college for all graduates with a specific GPA.....we are seeing a tremendous number of students losing their scholarships for poor grades or simply delaying entering the workforce to have a semester or more of playing at college. Accessible to anyone qualified does not equal a good choice for anyone.
- Powerofmene 9y ago
  I meant....accessible to anyone qualified does not equal a good choice for everyone who is qualified.

jseliger 9y ago

We need a college education to be accessible to anyone who is qualified You should read the article: The labor market doesn’t pay you for the useless subjects you master; it pays you for the preexisting traits you signal by mastering them. This is not a fringe idea. Michael Spence, Kenneth Arrow, and Joseph Stiglitz—all Nobel laureates in economics—made seminal contributions to the theory of educational signaling. Every college student who does the least work required to get good grades silently endorses the theory. But signaling plays almost no role in public discourse or policy making. As a society, we continue to push ever larger numbers of students into ever higher levels of education. The main effect is not better jobs or greater skill levels, but a credentialist arms race. If college is mostly about signaling, then it's an arms race, and the faster the herd, the more the individual most race in order to keep up. Accessibility to higher education is important, but much more of that education should be vocational in nature. Right now we have a lot of access to college, but that access has led to ballooning problems with student loans, along with Girard-style mimetic crises ( https://jakeseliger.com/2017/06/27/violence-and-the-sacred-on-campus/ https://jakeseliger.com/2017/06/27/violence-and-the-sacred-o... ).

SapphireSun 9y ago
If college is part of a signaling arms race, if we conceive of education purely as a labor market good, why are we asking the laborers to stand down from that race and not the employers?
- analog31 9y ago
  Indeed, if everybody knows that a college education is empty signaling, then how is it possibly still effective? The best and biggest employers should have the best information on the value of college education (in whole and in terms of its parts, such as humanities courses). They could expand their potential labor pool and make better or cheaper hires by adopting different hiring standards. If there's an information arbitrage going on here, somebody should be able to make money from it. In my view the elephant in the room is that maybe a college education is valuable after all, but we haven't put our finger on the precise reason.
  - cinquemb 9y ago
    >The best and biggest employers should have the best information on the value of college education (in whole and in terms of its parts, such as humanities courses). Depends how one defines "best"; though this is debatable, because one could say that these are the most beholden to the signaling arms race despite the data they may have to the contrary (i.e alphabet, amazon, et al). >In my view the elephant in the room is that maybe a college education is valuable after all, but we haven't put our finger on the precise reason. I don't think this is the elephant in the room at all, people routinely say that some parts of a college education can be valuable for various reasons, while others (as judged by value by the marketability of the graduates) are not valuable at all. In my view, the "best" and biggest employers like it because it signals some default level of competence (which is growing weaker as the incentives are to push everyone through to get some kind of degree) as well as relative malleability and conformance to institutionalized authority (those who opted out, or didn't go might not conform to the corporate identity or end up making it expensive for the employer to employ them, compared to their counter parts; after all, hiring based on objective measurements/metrics without any human involvement isn't something that happens today). Also these companies are largely affected by the turnover rates compared to smaller ones, so it's easier to target colleges graduates as a cohort. >If there's an information arbitrage going on here, somebody should be able to make money from it. I do think some employers take advantage of this environment, though I doubt it's alphabets, amazons, and apples…
  - Trundle 9y ago
    >Indeed, if everybody knows that a college education is empty signaling, then how is it possibly still effective? Who said it's empty? It's effective at finding the employer what they want. Just not efficient on the part of the employee.
- Trundle 9y ago
  > why are we asking the laborers Who is we? Certainly not the author of the article we're discussing. He specifically talks about recommending going in to higher education to the individual.
throwawayjava 9y ago
Accessibility != mandatory (literally the point of my post) Anyone != everyone (literally the point of my post) And "qualified" != anyone who can squeeze out a 20 on the ACT. Certainly far south of 70+%. > labor market doesn’t pay you for the useless subjects you master ...Girard-style mimetic crises Well hell, maybe try less Girard and more Fourier?

Powerofmene 9y ago

And on the flip side, in the states that use lottery funds to provide college for all graduates with a specific GPA.....we are seeing a tremendous number of students losing their scholarships for poor grades or simply delaying entering the workforce to have a semester or more of playing at college. Accessible to anyone qualified does not equal a good choice for anyone.

Powerofmene 9y ago
I meant....accessible to anyone qualified does not equal a good choice for everyone who is qualified.