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>Second, despite all the doom and gloom over student loan debt and grads not finding good jobs and , a college degree still has a good ROI in terms of higher wa
by savanaly 8y ago
>Second, despite all the doom and gloom over student loan debt and grads not finding good jobs and , a college degree still has a good ROI in terms of higher wages, lower unemployment, and higher lifetimes wealth, versus having no degree.
Does it change the framing of this fact if we assume a degree's main value to students is in its signaling power rather than what they learned? In which case ballooning debt is still a really problematic thing because it shows we're dumping money in an arms race which everyone would be better off if we could tone down.
- paulpauper 8y agowhether it's signaling or not does not change the evidence that degree holders are way better-off by many metrics. This could be due to IQ or some other latent variable. In an ideal world there would be no arms race, less debt, fewer loans, and a greater emphasis on learning than credentials. But at the individual level, a degree pays off still.
- toasterlovin 8y agoIf you're familiar with evolution of signaling traits in animals, this isn't actually very surprising. If you have a competitive mate market (where members of one or both sexes compete for the other sex), all excess resources will get funneled into signaling status. The most well known examples are probably peacocks and male birds of paradise, who spend a tremendous amount of energy building extravagant plumage to attract females. An alien biologist would probably predict that the end state of a competitive, highly differentiated job market is prospects investing excess resources into signaling quality until the marginal return approaches $0.