So my own experience is I learned gobs and gobs and GOBS of stuff in college and gradual school.
Of course you did. But you aren’t thinking opportunity costs here. People learn gobs and GOBS of stuff outside of college and high school. Like this site shouldn’t exist if this wasn’t so. ;)
And since outside of school people they learn stuff they actually use often (they basically are forced to do spaced repetition) or are interested in they arguably retain far more of that. Look at things school is supposed to teach us, like learning a foreign language.
Since I’m linking to Caplan I also recommend you read:
I interview for engineering positions at my company. We have information on where applicant came from and what degree we have, but our interviews are still primarily technological tests. We want to know if applicant knows CDMA and LTE and 802.11xxx and GPS and AWGN and dB and Matlab and all the things we associate with people who get stuff done. As a participant with others in the interviewing of others, I have NEVER heard a discussion of the quality of school or which degree the applicant had.
Remind me what fraction of students go into STEM fields. Then consider if this is true for people who hire say lawyers.
I think generally rejecting education as not cost effective is too clever by half.
If it was purely signalling, surely we would see interesting less expensive (in time and money) alternatives to send the signals, our economy is rather creative and adaptable in other ways.
Further to attribute my experiences in STEM to “but it might be different in STEM, what about the Lawyers?” If school is valuable in STEM but not in other things, make the case.
Further, we know school is valuable beyond signaling in business. Companies will hire people and PAY them to get MBAs. Not a result you’d expect if the MBA was primarily a signalling device.
I don’t think either of us has the last word on this question, and it will likely be useful to think about how to make education more valuable. But sometimes things ARE as they seem, probably, actually, more often than not.
Even if Education is not uniformly the most efficient way to spend effort, if it is needed to produce resources, if it triples the value of 1⁄2 the people who go through, it pays for itself on average pretty quickly. Yeah it would be nice to fine tune it and squeeze more return and have less waste, but it would be a mistake to claim it was useless and then have to say “but maybe not for MBA” “but maybe not for STEM” I can tell you for finance, accounting, I think you’ll be making exceptions, and rather than accept the claim on its face that things are not as they seem and then walk it back to maybe they are in this narrow case, maybe overall things ARE as they seem, but there are a few exceptions.
So my own experience is I learned gobs and gobs and GOBS of stuff in college and gradual school.
Of course you did. But you aren’t thinking opportunity costs here.
Well, yes I am. I quit a job as a technician at bell labs to go get my PhD at Caltech. As much as I was learning as a tech at Bell Labs, I was not going to be given my own projects to pound on, was not even allowed to write my own papers by my boss (this varied across bosses at bell labs, mine published work I had contributed to without my name on the publications, telling me I was getting paid as a tech and if I wanted my name on pubs I should go to grad school). I was not going to go to the insanely great classes I attended at Caltech, although I was able to attend a class a semester at nearby Rutgers at grad level in physics.
I came out of grad school and got a job as a professor at a research university. Seven years as a techician in the 10 area of Bell Labs and I would have still been a technician. I might have moved in to development and been a 2nd class citizen member of techical staff.
You can tell me that you know better than the technical leadership in universities and at bell labs whether the MS and PhD are “worth it,” but I don’t believe you and have no reason to believe you without some evidence, just as I believe the people who went to medical school over the people who tell me I can cure my cancer with peach pit extracts, vegan diets, cleanses and vitamins.
The preponderance of the evidence is that people making micro decisions choose education, people making hiring decisions, choose the educated and even pay to educate their employees. To convince me that the market is systematically failing to this extent, you will need evidence beyond assertion and iconoclasm.
I should make it clear, I recognize I am sort of a poster boy for when education would make sense, in terms of being extra smart and in terms of the kinds of jobs I like to do. But your assertion of signalling value only “forgot” about STEM, MBAs, and people who want to be professors, and doesn’t address the market failures of such seemingly efficient businesses as Bell Labs, Caltech, and Qualcomm in finding value in the educations of the educated and not just in their educability.
Of course you did. But you aren’t thinking opportunity costs here. People learn gobs and GOBS of stuff outside of college and high school. Like this site shouldn’t exist if this wasn’t so. ;)
And since outside of school people they learn stuff they actually use often (they basically are forced to do spaced repetition) or are interested in they arguably retain far more of that. Look at things school is supposed to teach us, like learning a foreign language.
Since I’m linking to Caplan I also recommend you read:
The Present Value of Learning, Adjusted for Forgetting
Why Is the National Return to Education So Low?
Does High School Algebra Pass a Cost-Benefit Test?
Remind me what fraction of students go into STEM fields. Then consider if this is true for people who hire say lawyers.
I think generally rejecting education as not cost effective is too clever by half.
If it was purely signalling, surely we would see interesting less expensive (in time and money) alternatives to send the signals, our economy is rather creative and adaptable in other ways.
Further to attribute my experiences in STEM to “but it might be different in STEM, what about the Lawyers?” If school is valuable in STEM but not in other things, make the case.
Further, we know school is valuable beyond signaling in business. Companies will hire people and PAY them to get MBAs. Not a result you’d expect if the MBA was primarily a signalling device.
I don’t think either of us has the last word on this question, and it will likely be useful to think about how to make education more valuable. But sometimes things ARE as they seem, probably, actually, more often than not.
Even if Education is not uniformly the most efficient way to spend effort, if it is needed to produce resources, if it triples the value of 1⁄2 the people who go through, it pays for itself on average pretty quickly. Yeah it would be nice to fine tune it and squeeze more return and have less waste, but it would be a mistake to claim it was useless and then have to say “but maybe not for MBA” “but maybe not for STEM” I can tell you for finance, accounting, I think you’ll be making exceptions, and rather than accept the claim on its face that things are not as they seem and then walk it back to maybe they are in this narrow case, maybe overall things ARE as they seem, but there are a few exceptions.
Well, yes I am. I quit a job as a technician at bell labs to go get my PhD at Caltech. As much as I was learning as a tech at Bell Labs, I was not going to be given my own projects to pound on, was not even allowed to write my own papers by my boss (this varied across bosses at bell labs, mine published work I had contributed to without my name on the publications, telling me I was getting paid as a tech and if I wanted my name on pubs I should go to grad school). I was not going to go to the insanely great classes I attended at Caltech, although I was able to attend a class a semester at nearby Rutgers at grad level in physics.
I came out of grad school and got a job as a professor at a research university. Seven years as a techician in the 10 area of Bell Labs and I would have still been a technician. I might have moved in to development and been a 2nd class citizen member of techical staff.
You can tell me that you know better than the technical leadership in universities and at bell labs whether the MS and PhD are “worth it,” but I don’t believe you and have no reason to believe you without some evidence, just as I believe the people who went to medical school over the people who tell me I can cure my cancer with peach pit extracts, vegan diets, cleanses and vitamins.
The preponderance of the evidence is that people making micro decisions choose education, people making hiring decisions, choose the educated and even pay to educate their employees. To convince me that the market is systematically failing to this extent, you will need evidence beyond assertion and iconoclasm.
I should make it clear, I recognize I am sort of a poster boy for when education would make sense, in terms of being extra smart and in terms of the kinds of jobs I like to do. But your assertion of signalling value only “forgot” about STEM, MBAs, and people who want to be professors, and doesn’t address the market failures of such seemingly efficient businesses as Bell Labs, Caltech, and Qualcomm in finding value in the educations of the educated and not just in their educability.