Higher education is a large investment, so while personal growth is all good and fine, economic concern is paramount. As the article states, "most of the benef

Higher education is a large investment, so while personal growth is all good and fine, economic concern is paramount. As the article states, "most of the benefits of college come from graduating, not enrolling". This data do seem to be in favor of the hypothesis that the paper matters. More data on this would be very welcome. It also intuitively makes sense to me, as the paper is easy to verify, but personal growth is not. While I suspect measure of personal growth provides better information to employers compared to the paper, the cost of acquiring that information may make the paper more valuable in the net. Also you seem to underestimate the value the paper provides to employers: jumping through hoops correlates with conscientiousness personality trait, which is a good predictor of workplace performance.