My own take was that there are a couple separate issues:
1) Is 7/8ths of schooling as proportionately strong signal as 8/8ths?
2) Is language requirements a signal anyone should care about?
My guess is Zvi thinks the answer to #2 is “no” (given that Zvi has a lot of bad things to say about school in the first place), but that the existence of the language requirement is a proof-of-concept that #1 is unlikely to be true. In the case of language, an employer shouldn’t care about that aspect of schooling one way or another, but in the case of biology class if you’re hiring a biologist, you should.
My own take was that there are a couple separate issues:
1) Is 7/8ths of schooling as proportionately strong signal as 8/8ths?
2) Is language requirements a signal anyone should care about?
My guess is Zvi thinks the answer to #2 is “no” (given that Zvi has a lot of bad things to say about school in the first place), but that the existence of the language requirement is a proof-of-concept that #1 is unlikely to be true. In the case of language, an employer shouldn’t care about that aspect of schooling one way or another, but in the case of biology class if you’re hiring a biologist, you should.