The signalling/screening theory of education gains most of its intuitive support from the lack of an obvious and direct relationship between what you learn at school/university and what you do in your first job.
But it's inconsistent with lots of empirical evidence, starting with the fact that test scores at high school completion are good predictors of college grades, making an extra four years of screening pointless. I presented some of the evidence 20 years ago https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8462.00100 but, as usual, failed to convince many. Maybe this natural experiment will carry more weight
Interesting article. I would like to see other studies with similar results for other universities and majors.
I think the there is a lot of signaling, but in degrees that pay in the top third among college graduates (typically engineering, economics, etc), I think some very important skills that employers covet is taught.
It is hard for me to imagine an employer wanting to hire a person without a basic knowledge of engineering regardless of how intelligent the person is.
I've been hearing "college isn't worth it" since the day I was born. This message usually comes from people who went to college and weren't as successful and they wanted to be, or from people who didn't go to college and found success anyway. The math shows that it makes sense if you choose the right degree, don't borrow too much money, and don't drop out.
From my own personal experience, having an economics degree can be painful. Not because it was hard, but because having that formal training makes it soul-crushing to see bad economics become popular economics. But without going to college, would I be able to identify bad economics? That's hard to answer. Too many smart people get scammed by it.
Without having a science-based framework to interpret economic issues, the question would become "how do I know who to trust to explain it to me?" Helping people understand how to answer that question is where I think the biggest benefit of college comes from, even if it's not easy to measure, because it can be generalized into every field. But I'm not sure how much research has been done here.
Along the same line, I definitely want to make sure my lawyer and my doctor have done the work...
The signalling/screening theory of education gains most of its intuitive support from the lack of an obvious and direct relationship between what you learn at school/university and what you do in your first job.
But it's inconsistent with lots of empirical evidence, starting with the fact that test scores at high school completion are good predictors of college grades, making an extra four years of screening pointless. I presented some of the evidence 20 years ago https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8462.00100 but, as usual, failed to convince many. Maybe this natural experiment will carry more weight
Interesting article. I would like to see other studies with similar results for other universities and majors.
I think the there is a lot of signaling, but in degrees that pay in the top third among college graduates (typically engineering, economics, etc), I think some very important skills that employers covet is taught.
It is hard for me to imagine an employer wanting to hire a person without a basic knowledge of engineering regardless of how intelligent the person is.
I appreciate this research.
I've been hearing "college isn't worth it" since the day I was born. This message usually comes from people who went to college and weren't as successful and they wanted to be, or from people who didn't go to college and found success anyway. The math shows that it makes sense if you choose the right degree, don't borrow too much money, and don't drop out.
From my own personal experience, having an economics degree can be painful. Not because it was hard, but because having that formal training makes it soul-crushing to see bad economics become popular economics. But without going to college, would I be able to identify bad economics? That's hard to answer. Too many smart people get scammed by it.
Without having a science-based framework to interpret economic issues, the question would become "how do I know who to trust to explain it to me?" Helping people understand how to answer that question is where I think the biggest benefit of college comes from, even if it's not easy to measure, because it can be generalized into every field. But I'm not sure how much research has been done here.
Along the same line, I definitely want to make sure my lawyer and my doctor have done the work...