"Op-Ed: What students know that experts don’t: School is all about signaling, not skill-building
Parents, teachers, politicians and researchers tirelessly warn today’s youths about the unforgiving job market that awaits them. If they want to succeed in tomorrow’s economy, they can’t just coast through school. They have to soak up precious knowledge like a sponge. But even as adulthood approaches, students rarely heed this advice. Most treat high school and college like a game, not an opportunity to build lifelong skills."
The signaling aspect can be important, but speaking from my own experience both as a student and as a professor, substantive knowledge and skill development are both tremendously important part of the equation. I learned to write effectively and to think more clearly and in a more disciplined way as a student, while also mastering the basics of my field. Those skills and that knowledge got me into top graduate programs that led to lifelong employment with work that was deeply rewarding. In addition, I have carried with me a repository of knowledge that has helped me better understand myself and the world, and I “learned how to learn,” a life skill that has frequently proven invaluable. I see the same thing happening with my students.
How much is signaling and how much is skill building depends on the student and the subject. Perhaps Caplan has been encountering too many students majoring in beer rather than the major they are nominally in at college.
OP: After reading the LA Times article “The Case Against Education: Why The Education System Is A Waste of Time and Money” by Bryan Caplan, I have come to a different conclusion than that of Professor Caplan.
My conclusion is that Professor Caplan misunderstands the purpose and benefits of higher education. Professor Caplan also misunderstands the realities of today’s workplace.
@bclintonk in post #2 above comes much closer to understanding the purpose and benefits of higher education than does Professor Caplan’s pessimistic diatribe.
Communication skills and how to approach problems (aka “problem solving skills”.).
That is all.
Everything & more that @bclintonk wrote about in post #2 above is included in my two point summary.
Professor Caplan’s position that “school is all about signaling, not skill-building” is incorrect.
School is all about skill building. Professor Caplan just does not understand the purpose and benefits of higher education.
The skills that one should develop through schooling are communication skills and how to approach problems (often referred to as “problem solving skills”.
As CC rules prevent posting an entire article via cut and paste, you’ll need to click the link to see the entire article and digest Caplan’s argument in its entirety. Thank you.
When I read it, I thought it applied more to non-STEM majors than STEM majors. I also think there is a great value to learning some subjects (history, for example) even though they may not be directly applicable to a job.
The Econ and business majors significantly reduced the number of courses in Econ needed to graduate and subsequently the students graduating from that program received lower salaries (while salaries received by those in other majors like engineering remained unchanged). This is evidence against the signaling hypothesis and in support of the human capital hypothesis (that education makes you more productive).
I think reality is more nuanced than an either/or.
I’ve hired for big corporations for over 30 years. I’ve never met a Swarthmore senior who couldn’t write; I’ve never met a Cal Tech grad who had trouble with numerical analysis whether it was finance (having never taken a finance course), accounting, or more complex stuff manipulating large datasets which required competency in programming and modeling.
So there are times where the education IS the signal- nobody graduates from Princeton with a degree in philosophy who can’t read and process and make sense of dense and complex content. And other times, the human capital component is really critical- when you need to hire a civil engineer, that person needs to know how to build a bridge, and when you are hiring nurses, that person needs to know the difference between 10 mg and 100 mg.
As a Classics major, no employer has ever asked me to take a work by Plato and translate it and then assess its relevance within its historical context. But no employer has ever wondered about my curiosity or ability to read a dense 50 page presentation or analysis and crank out a three paragraph executive summary which is accurate AND highlights the relevant findings.
I think some employers place too great a priority on the signaling function. Hiring based on the school nameplate is a readily available heuristic, and that makes it an easy crutch. Sure, Princeton philosophy grads can most often think and write clearly, make sense of difficult texts, and approach problems logically and systematically—though not always. I’ve known some who came out of Princeton distinctly lacking in those skills And sure, Caltech grads almost invariably have outstanding quantitative skills—they wouldn’t have gotten into Caltech without those skills… But there are also plenty of top graduates of public universities with equally impressive skills and academic achievements who too often get shortchanged in the process.
This is probably the greatest benefit of an Ivy League or equivalent elite private education. It’s not necessarily that the education itself is better. I’ve taught in both the Ivy League and in some very good public universities. What goes on in the classroom isn’t appreciably different—for the most part, the classes aren’t more difficult or challenging in the Ivy League, there are at least as many “gut” courses that are easy A’s, and on the whole the grading curve is more generous in the Ivy League. Perhaps more importantly, my best students in the public universities easily match Ivy League students in sheer intellectual throw weight and academic achievement. To be sure, the median student is better in the Ivy League, but the top students aren’t different in any meaningful respect. But the Ivy League grads will have a huge lifetime advantage because lazy HR professionals and hiring committees generally won’t require the Ivy League grads to prove themselves individually, even the slackers among them. They’ll just take the college nameplate as all the proof of competence that’s needed.
Not so the public school grads. If they’re lucky they’ll get a chance to prove themselves individually without getting any benefit of the doubt notwithstanding their stellar academic credentials, and in some industries they’ll have a hard time even getting a foot in the door, no matter their individual talents and accomplishments. That’s why I say the signaling function is sometimes important. IMO it’s a profoundly unequal and unjust game.
(Blossom, I’m not accusing you here. It’s clear from your comments that you’re conscientious and fair-minded about these things).
I love hiring the scrappy self-starter from directional state u who works his/her tail off and is voraciously curious. And it’s easy to take a pass on the party bro from elite U who majored in beer pong. But I would be lying if I told you that the CS major from Southern CT State is as well prepared-- for a role requiring abstract thinking, mathematical chops and creativity-- as the CS major from MIT.
Am I lazy? Maybe. But I don’t get paid to interview 30,000 kids in order to hire the dozen or two dozen I need. I can review several thousand…or tens of thousands of resumes to whittle down to 70 interviews to end up with my tidy pile of hires. And if that means guessing that U Michigan (see? Not always a private U) has a more rigorous CS program than University of New Haven ( a private u), I am prepared to guess until data shows me otherwise.
And we do look at data. Missouri S and T…the best engineering program nobody at your grocery store or car wash has ever heard of. University of Tulsa which is private but usually not described as elite has a phenomenal program in Cyber. Delaware’s museum studies program, U Maine for paper technology, UT Austin is the top accounting program in the country in my opinion, Baruch for finance even though New Yorkers hate hearing me say that. I need 20 new grads for an international rotational program where the postings are not London and Paris but Lima and Addis Ababa and require language fluency? BYU!
I think that with degree inflation, a BA is no longer as much of a positive, but not having one is a negative.
If you read this article with the majority of students in mind- not top college intellectuals- it certainly makes some good points.
Now that everyone feels they have to go to college in order to have a good job/life (and the priority is money, not learning, which is understandable), many families are suffering under the weight of tuition and loans when no clear job skill is earned.
If our society could return to having access to good jobs without a college degree, and could substantially increase focus on vocational training, as well as resume respect for that path, I think a lot of kids and families would benefit.
Unfortunately manufacturing is no longer a path for many.
There is something seriously wrong in the picture here: the pressure on everyone to go to college.
The goal for many is indeed graduation (certification) and professors who teach easy classes are rewarded with high reviews. A secondary focus is grades, so easy graders also get good reviews.
The certification is more important than substance for many many students. The easier the path, the better. Rigor is not appreciated.
That isn’t to say that a Princeton philosophy major isn’t in it for the learning. But that kind of student is statistically an outlier.
Even among Princeton students, there are likely many who were motivated to attend Princeton for the fast track recruiting into “elite” jobs like management consulting and investment banking.
@blossom response on #10 is right on point. I participated in a lot of hiring decisions for a Big Law firm and then a bulge bracket IB. There were always going to be way more qualified people applying for entry level jobs than positions we had to fill. It would be foolish not to use ready made filters like undergrad institution and major, law school/MBA program to cull the initial list. My firms were comfortable that it was highly likely that a “Princeton” grad of certain majors with a 3.5+GPA and/or a “Harvard” Law/MBA in the top 50% of the class would be capable of doing the work. We looked at resumes of applicants from less prestigious/selective schools, but they needed to be in the top 1% to 10% to make the initial cut. As a business, our goal was to find the best candidates in an efficient manner not expending resources in time and money to find the odd diamond in the rough in some obscure corner.
@ucbalumnus of course: I chose philosophy partly for that reason, not econ!
@BKSquared you are discussing elite jobs for elite students, a minority of the student/worker population.
That said, I believe that as “everyone goes to college,” it is not the degree that distinguishes anyone but the school attended. Unfortunately.
Still, most people I know who went to state colleges or universities have done fine. They might not work for Bain as often as an Ivy grad, or whatever, but get good jobs, so more training or school, buy a house, have kids, etc.
^ Yes, but as you mentioned the same culling process still applies to “Main Street” jobs. Reality is employers are rationally making initial decisions assuming that colleges, majors, gpas and internships are providing valuable filters as to capability, work ethic and ambition.
Although using college name brings in other factors, since which college a traditional college student attends and graduates from is heavily determined by parental circumstances and choices (particularly financial ones). It also suggests that the employer places a high value on how well the college (graduate) applicant did in high school, since that determines college choice after parent factors impose their limitations.
I find it somewhat ironic that Mr. Caplan who went to a charter high school and has degrees from Princeton and UC Berkeley and is a professor of economics is now saying that an education is largely “signaling” and not about the skills one acquires.
We are to believe that HIS education was a “waste of time and money”?
This is perhaps an unfair comparison. I don’t have a lot of confidence in the quality of education at most state “directional” schools either. There might be the occasional diamond-in-the-rough who graduates from one of those schools, but generally even they need a lot of polishing before they’re ready for prime time, and most employers don;t have the patience, the time, or the resources to devote to that sort of development project.
My comments were more about top grads from the better public flagships, who IMO often don’t get an even break in the hiring process. It depends on the school, the field, and the particular employer, of course. But bottom line, it’s not a meritocracy, or at least not purely so. Many employers take easy shortcuts that operate to systematically disadvantage top graduates from very good schools who may be every bit as well qualified—and in some cases more so—than run-of-the-mill graduates of elite private schools . And this phenomenon seems to be especially pronounced in the Northeast, where public universities are often held in disdain, with no effort made to distinguish among them on the basis of the quality of the school or the quality of the particular graduate. .
I read Professor Caplan’s LA Times article “What students know that experts don’t: School is all about signaling, not skill-building” again.
This work product can only have been produced by one immersed in academia and unfamiliar with the reality of today’s workplace.
Professor Bryan Caplan’s article attempts to support two assumptions:
The main reason firms reward education is because it certifies (or “signals”) brains, work ethic, and conformity."
Educational austerity is the simplest path back to an economy in which serious on-the-job learning starts during high school–not after college.
With respect to point #1, Professor Caplan might be confusing the granting of an interview with a job offer. Firms grant job interviews to those meeting certain requirements. Job offers are made to those who pass multiple screening tests.
Regarding point #2, serious learning does begin in high school. Maybe Professor Caplan is confusing trade schools with the primary goals of education: Communication Skills & Problem Solving Skills.