Hiring and wage premia mediated via testing on subject matter covered in college coursework is both (1) atypical--many (most?) grads don't even work in a major-related field (and yet the salary advantage persists), and (2) even those cases are potentially less about obtaining useful education than it seems, prima facie: e.g., software dev hiring was done via solving leetcode problems for years, but devs complained the testing didn't resemble their actual work very well.
Thanks! The paper touches upon something that I have always been mulling around - do we need universities or should we have more trade/profession schools. For example, I’ve always been surprised as to why investment banks haven’t created their own school. They have the capital, they could train people as they wish. Just something I’ve always wondered.
Im not sure what the debate is about. Blind Freddy can see that another three or four years practice at analysing problems in what ever field literature history or economics or whatever makes you better at analysing problems period.
The debate is often an ideological one. Unfortunately, it is also often made by people who don't want students to see that the research doesn't back up the ideology's conclusions...
Just some anecdotal evidence from comments on my own YouTube video talking about seven empirical facts on the division between college grads/non-college grads:
The "is college worth it?" discussion in the public sphere seems to be concentrated on signals coming from the top of the wage distribution of high school graduates (I.e. the trades) and the bottom of the wage distribution of college graduates (I.e. lower wage majors). People on opposing ends aren't really vocal.
I think the equilibrium speaks for itself... Ex ante, college is worth it for the people who go in terms of both signaling, skills, and even networking. Ex post, people at the bottom of the wage distribution don't find it to be worth it. I think this regret is interesting, and maybe it's the psychology associated with making a decision on imperfect information with a distribution of potential outcomes.
Hiring and wage premia mediated via testing on subject matter covered in college coursework is both (1) atypical--many (most?) grads don't even work in a major-related field (and yet the salary advantage persists), and (2) even those cases are potentially less about obtaining useful education than it seems, prima facie: e.g., software dev hiring was done via solving leetcode problems for years, but devs complained the testing didn't resemble their actual work very well.
You might be interested in the research of Mehrzad Baktash, he looks at the effects of over education and how those skills affect performance
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/276272/1/GLO-DP-1327.pdf
Thanks! The paper touches upon something that I have always been mulling around - do we need universities or should we have more trade/profession schools. For example, I’ve always been surprised as to why investment banks haven’t created their own school. They have the capital, they could train people as they wish. Just something I’ve always wondered.
Business academics have thoughts on that, and it isn’t pretty
But it also seems that *almost any* higher education improves the performance of workers
Considering how often people change careers these days, it’s looking like either/or between higher education and trade schools is a bad idea
Im not sure what the debate is about. Blind Freddy can see that another three or four years practice at analysing problems in what ever field literature history or economics or whatever makes you better at analysing problems period.
The debate is often an ideological one. Unfortunately, it is also often made by people who don't want students to see that the research doesn't back up the ideology's conclusions...
Just some anecdotal evidence from comments on my own YouTube video talking about seven empirical facts on the division between college grads/non-college grads:
The "is college worth it?" discussion in the public sphere seems to be concentrated on signals coming from the top of the wage distribution of high school graduates (I.e. the trades) and the bottom of the wage distribution of college graduates (I.e. lower wage majors). People on opposing ends aren't really vocal.
I think the equilibrium speaks for itself... Ex ante, college is worth it for the people who go in terms of both signaling, skills, and even networking. Ex post, people at the bottom of the wage distribution don't find it to be worth it. I think this regret is interesting, and maybe it's the psychology associated with making a decision on imperfect information with a distribution of potential outcomes.