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Quoth Dr. Bryan Caplan, who has an excellent book on the matter: """ In a world of costly information, employers sensibly rely on a lot of statistical generali
by hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
Quoth Dr. Bryan Caplan, who has an excellent book on the matter:
"""
In a world of costly information, employers sensibly rely on a lot of statistical generalizations. One of these, I’ll warrant, is that weirdos [non-degree holders here] are, on average, worse employees than conformists [degree holders]. Admittedly, the truth of this probably varies from industry to industry. (Check out Peter Jackson). But typically, usually, normally, normality is the best bet. The upshot is that some clever but unconventional ideas sit on the shelf, untried.
"""
The term to Google around for is, apparently, 'statistical discrimination'. There are of course plenty of other ways to be a weirdo in the eyes of an employer, but degree vs non-degree is one of the biggest ones.
- red_admiral 3y agoAcademia filters a lot less for conformity than it used to. Indeed, in some very elite places, any attempt to enforce the old-fashioned style of conformity on students would be seen as Problematic. On minority students, doubly so. This does not need to be a bad thing - how many nose rings someone has and what color their hair is, is not a good proxy for whether they are any good at a particular skill like coding, for example.