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To your first point, you may be interested to read Bryan Caplan’s “The Case Against Education.” He makes a very strong, quantitative case that education is prim

To your first point, you may be interested to read Bryan Caplan’s “The Case Against Education.” He makes a very strong, quantitative case that education is primarily a signaling device. For instance the difference between 3.5 years without graduating and 4 years + graduation is immense, whereas in a non-signaling model, they should have very similar outcomes.

bairrd 8y ago
Doesn't that book have a whole chapter espousing hyper-libertarian points about why child labour is good?
- pitaj 8y ago
  Depends on how you define children, how you define labor, and how you define good.
TimPC 8y ago
There is a huge selection bias in these groups. 3.5 years without graduating is likely to be students who are doing poorly since if you were a top tier student you aren't going to quit 0.5 years off from a degree under most circumstances. People quitting university after 3.5 years most often have a number of failed courses and aren't 0.5 years from a degree.
- pitaj 8y ago
  Another example then: college students forget a lot they learn inside of a few years. The only thing they hold for a significant amount of time is the prerequisite knowledge they needed to learn everything else they were taught. This applies especially to subjects largely unrelated to their degree / interests.
frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
Sure, but signaling isn't all bad, it's frequently misunderstood. Here: In fact, signaling almost certainly is productive. Sure, in the simplest signaling model where there's only one job, education signaling is zero-sum (if you get ahead it's at the expense of others). But as soon as you introduce multiple, different, occupations, that changes! For a basic example of this, say you have two occupations, each with room to employ half the population, "Simple" and "Complex." In Simple, everyone produces 1. In Complex, smarties (half the pop) produce 4 and everyone else produces 0. In extreme-land where there's no signaling, people are basically assigned to jobs randomly, everyone gets paid a wage of 1, and average production is .51 + .5(.54+.50) = 1.5. Now introduce a completely wasteful, no-HC education signal. Ed is free for smarties, but it costs 3 for everyone else because they'd have to hire tutors. Now, employers know who the smarties are, and they all get Complex jobs. Others get Simple jobs. Production is .51 + .5(4) = 3. Smarties get a wage of 4 and others get a wage of 1. Others don't bother going to school - they'd get a wage bump of 3 but they'd spend it all on school anyway, so why bother? Here, signaling alone doubled production (this approach is generally called "matching"). There's a reason we call signaling outcomes the "second-best" outcome in game theory, and not "the really awful outcome" - because it can increase efficiency over NOT having the signal. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/976932046638538752.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/976932046638538752.html
ethbro 8y ago
I think are two different stages we're conflating here. Education, in the resume / HR sense is absolutely a signal. Education, in maintaining and excelling in your profession is knowledge. It's lamentable that degrees are used as filters, but I wouldn't trust someone to do an electrical engineering job who didn't have a related degree. There's simply too much to learn. (Yes, exceptions do exist, but they're not common) I'd argue the more pointed questions to colleges should be: if you're not equipping your graduates with the latter knowledge, then what are they buying? And why should they continue to pay you?

bairrd 8y ago

Doesn't that book have a whole chapter espousing hyper-libertarian points about why child labour is good?

pitaj 8y ago
Depends on how you define children, how you define labor, and how you define good.

TimPC 8y ago

There is a huge selection bias in these groups. 3.5 years without graduating is likely to be students who are doing poorly since if you were a top tier student you aren't going to quit 0.5 years off from a degree under most circumstances. People quitting university after 3.5 years most often have a number of failed courses and aren't 0.5 years from a degree.

pitaj 8y ago
Another example then: college students forget a lot they learn inside of a few years. The only thing they hold for a significant amount of time is the prerequisite knowledge they needed to learn everything else they were taught. This applies especially to subjects largely unrelated to their degree / interests.

frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago

Sure, but signaling isn't all bad, it's frequently misunderstood. Here: In fact, signaling almost certainly is productive. Sure, in the simplest signaling model where there's only one job, education signaling is zero-sum (if you get ahead it's at the expense of others). But as soon as you introduce multiple, different, occupations, that changes! For a basic example of this, say you have two occupations, each with room to employ half the population, "Simple" and "Complex." In Simple, everyone produces 1. In Complex, smarties (half the pop) produce 4 and everyone else produces 0. In extreme-land where there's no signaling, people are basically assigned to jobs randomly, everyone gets paid a wage of 1, and average production is .51 + .5(.54+.50) = 1.5. Now introduce a completely wasteful, no-HC education signal. Ed is free for smarties, but it costs 3 for everyone else because they'd have to hire tutors. Now, employers know who the smarties are, and they all get Complex jobs. Others get Simple jobs. Production is .51 + .5(4) = 3. Smarties get a wage of 4 and others get a wage of 1. Others don't bother going to school - they'd get a wage bump of 3 but they'd spend it all on school anyway, so why bother? Here, signaling alone doubled production (this approach is generally called "matching"). There's a reason we call signaling outcomes the "second-best" outcome in game theory, and not "the really awful outcome" - because it can increase efficiency over NOT having the signal. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/976932046638538752.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/976932046638538752.html

ethbro 8y ago

I think are two different stages we're conflating here. Education, in the resume / HR sense is absolutely a signal. Education, in maintaining and excelling in your profession is knowledge. It's lamentable that degrees are used as filters, but I wouldn't trust someone to do an electrical engineering job who didn't have a related degree. There's simply too much to learn. (Yes, exceptions do exist, but they're not common) I'd argue the more pointed questions to colleges should be: if you're not equipping your graduates with the latter knowledge, then what are they buying? And why should they continue to pay you?