Even assuming all your givens, why would this be a better alternative to college at signaling? College already works. And also sometimes teaches you stuff also. Prestigious schools are expensive because they have a high reputation, thus demand for their signaling is greater and they can afford to charge more. If you could simply inject signaling value into a program, you could just pick a random already-existing, cheaper college and do it with them, avoiding all the weirdness signaling that’d be going on here.
Except there’s a difference between dedicating your life to something for a month (Which you can often do without burning out) and doing so for years at a time.
The college I went to essentially had 40 hour work weeks and no summer vacation. I think that accomplished the “demonstrate work ethic” goal just fine. Plus I was actually learning things the whole time.
Even assuming all your givens, why would this be a better alternative to college at signaling? College already works. And also sometimes teaches you stuff also. Prestigious schools are expensive because they have a high reputation, thus demand for their signaling is greater and they can afford to charge more. If you could simply inject signaling value into a program, you could just pick a random already-existing, cheaper college and do it with them, avoiding all the weirdness signaling that’d be going on here.
Efficiency. If a comparable screening procedure can be performed in one month then that is years of time saved.
Except there’s a difference between dedicating your life to something for a month (Which you can often do without burning out) and doing so for years at a time.
The college I went to essentially had 40 hour work weeks and no summer vacation. I think that accomplished the “demonstrate work ethic” goal just fine. Plus I was actually learning things the whole time.
The key part of the program is the 16 hours a day of simple math. A cheaper college could, of course, do this.
It’s a better alternative to college mainly because it’s cheaper.