I was typing up a comment to this, and I realized I don’t understand what’s forcing the current equillibrium. Companies are said to want university graduates because that signals their ability to follow boring orders for years successfully. But, like, why isn’t high school and some impressive projects enough for that? Surely completing high school serves as a following orders well signal, and impressive projects serve as an intelligence signal. In which case, universities should be irrelevant. Unless you’re also signalling that you obey social pressures, which included a pressure to go to university because that was correlated with earning a lot of money and prestige, and lots of the people hiring you went to university and think less of people who didn’t go to university because it was prestigious when they went. Does that sound plausible to anyone?
University has value in its connections and the confirmation that a candidate has the requisite knowledge. Many large companies auto-reject anyone without an “upper education” for these reasons, as it’s easier to apply that as a filter and miss a couple people than take the time to know everyone’s unique situations.
The article also references the subgroup of “competent but apathetic” (which I would subjectively say is common, and the main missed population, as those with perseverance and unrelenting raw passion tend to do well on their own). A lot of people don’t have the motivation for following through with “impressive projects” on top of the drain of HS, and (to use the example of programming) just internalize the concepts, create smaller utilities and projects as needed (alongside self-imposed pressure to do things for school clubs, volunteering, casual competitions, et cetera). You’re left with a young group that enjoys a subject, is relatively knowledgeable about it, but with insufficient experience, not able to apply themselves past a certain threshold of individual motivation.
Societally introduced opportunities and mentorship that is more open to the top 3-5% as opposed to the .1% that knows how to market themselves mitigates that.
Wait, I am a bit confused about where we stand. Can we establish as common knowledge that university is mostly about signalling and not about gaining knowledge that is useful in jobs? Do we also agree that apprenticeships/live experience are a better way to gain job relevant skill? Do we also agree that we’re stuck in an inadequate equilibrium right now, with strong forces stopping messing things up on the supply and demand side for apprenticeships? And that the purpose of your article was to say “hey, there’s a problem here. Think about it some more” rather than to present new insights?
I have heard the theory put forward a lot that a university degree provides plausible deniability to the person who makes the decision to hire you. If you turn out to be a problem then whoever hired you can say “degree from X” and suddenly no one can blame them for making a bad choice. If you hire a 17 year old who “seems competent” then they probably are fine, but if something goes wrong the person who made the hiring decision suddenly has to defend the “they seemed competent” position in a hypothetical where everyone now knows they were not.
The usefulness of university depends on the job. It’s better for networking than anything.
And yes, I’m just calling some attention to the problem. I’ve considered a few solutions but nothing stands out as reasonably implementable within our Overton window
I was typing up a comment to this, and I realized I don’t understand what’s forcing the current equillibrium. Companies are said to want university graduates because that signals their ability to follow boring orders for years successfully. But, like, why isn’t high school and some impressive projects enough for that? Surely completing high school serves as a following orders well signal, and impressive projects serve as an intelligence signal. In which case, universities should be irrelevant. Unless you’re also signalling that you obey social pressures, which included a pressure to go to university because that was correlated with earning a lot of money and prestige, and lots of the people hiring you went to university and think less of people who didn’t go to university because it was prestigious when they went. Does that sound plausible to anyone?
University has value in its connections and the confirmation that a candidate has the requisite knowledge. Many large companies auto-reject anyone without an “upper education” for these reasons, as it’s easier to apply that as a filter and miss a couple people than take the time to know everyone’s unique situations.
The article also references the subgroup of “competent but apathetic” (which I would subjectively say is common, and the main missed population, as those with perseverance and unrelenting raw passion tend to do well on their own). A lot of people don’t have the motivation for following through with “impressive projects” on top of the drain of HS, and (to use the example of programming) just internalize the concepts, create smaller utilities and projects as needed (alongside self-imposed pressure to do things for school clubs, volunteering, casual competitions, et cetera). You’re left with a young group that enjoys a subject, is relatively knowledgeable about it, but with insufficient experience, not able to apply themselves past a certain threshold of individual motivation.
Societally introduced opportunities and mentorship that is more open to the top 3-5% as opposed to the .1% that knows how to market themselves mitigates that.
Wait, I am a bit confused about where we stand. Can we establish as common knowledge that university is mostly about signalling and not about gaining knowledge that is useful in jobs? Do we also agree that apprenticeships/live experience are a better way to gain job relevant skill? Do we also agree that we’re stuck in an inadequate equilibrium right now, with strong forces stopping messing things up on the supply and demand side for apprenticeships? And that the purpose of your article was to say “hey, there’s a problem here. Think about it some more” rather than to present new insights?
I have heard the theory put forward a lot that a university degree provides plausible deniability to the person who makes the decision to hire you. If you turn out to be a problem then whoever hired you can say “degree from X” and suddenly no one can blame them for making a bad choice. If you hire a 17 year old who “seems competent” then they probably are fine, but if something goes wrong the person who made the hiring decision suddenly has to defend the “they seemed competent” position in a hypothetical where everyone now knows they were not.
The usefulness of university depends on the job. It’s better for networking than anything.
And yes, I’m just calling some attention to the problem. I’ve considered a few solutions but nothing stands out as reasonably implementable within our Overton window
Could also be that you’re a more reliable worker if you have a ton of student debt.
you’d be more inclined to be obedient if you’re a debt slave, yes