Given a choice between managing a team of 10 recent college graduates vs a team of 10 different unique autodidacts, I’d choose the former. So it seems like education isn’t mostly signaling. It’s more about turning people into standardized employees, which is useful for the same reason standardized parts are useful. There might be cheaper ways to do that, though.
Do you think education makes college graduates into standardized employees though? In my experience, watching other standardized employees had more influence on me becoming a standardized employee than going through college.
I’d also argue that what you described is at least partly signaling. The group of “10 unique autodidacts” will, on average, be less conformist than the group of 10 recent college graduates prior to either group undergoing the experiences that define them in this hypothetical. The fact that they decided to become autodidacts is a signal of that pre-existing tendency, admittedly reinforced by whatever experience had not following the standard track.
To now argue against myself, I agree with the underlying point that I failed to discuss why hiring often does (and should) optimize for not making mistakes rather than finding optimal individuals.
Maybe the key trait isn’t conformity (which is easy to test in an interview), but reliability (which is impossible to test in a short time). And people aren’t very reliable by nature; it seems to me that school makes many people better at not flaking, not just helps them signal non-flakeyness. That would also partly explain the sheepskin effect, because anyone who studied 3.9 years instead of 4 is clearly flakey.
I think it might be helpful to taboo the term “standardized employees” here, because I strongly suspect that you and cousin_it are defining the term differently.
cousin_it seems to be suggesting that education tends to produce people who have a similar skillset or body of knowledge. This is what having a degree implies; that one has attained a certain level of knowledge that an educational institution has deemed acceptable to qualify for receiving the degree. This is part of the reason why employers look for various degree levels, as the level of degree implies a certain level of knowledge necessary for the job that the employer will not need to take the time to impart themselves.
You, on the other hand, seem to be referring to how one acts on the job as the primary meaning of “standardization”. Ability to conform is, to a certain degree, a useful trait in most jobs, but it isn’t necessarily a trait that is imparted via formal education. Further, one’s ability to conform usually has very little to do with one’s ability to actually perform the job in question, since lacking the knowledge that forms the basis of the job is not something that can necessarily be covered up by conforming.
Given a choice between managing a team of 10 recent college graduates vs a team of 10 different unique autodidacts, I’d choose the former. So it seems like education isn’t mostly signaling. It’s more about turning people into standardized employees, which is useful for the same reason standardized parts are useful. There might be cheaper ways to do that, though.
Do you think education makes college graduates into standardized employees though? In my experience, watching other standardized employees had more influence on me becoming a standardized employee than going through college.
I’d also argue that what you described is at least partly signaling. The group of “10 unique autodidacts” will, on average, be less conformist than the group of 10 recent college graduates prior to either group undergoing the experiences that define them in this hypothetical. The fact that they decided to become autodidacts is a signal of that pre-existing tendency, admittedly reinforced by whatever experience had not following the standard track.
To now argue against myself, I agree with the underlying point that I failed to discuss why hiring often does (and should) optimize for not making mistakes rather than finding optimal individuals.
All good points.
Maybe the key trait isn’t conformity (which is easy to test in an interview), but reliability (which is impossible to test in a short time). And people aren’t very reliable by nature; it seems to me that school makes many people better at not flaking, not just helps them signal non-flakeyness. That would also partly explain the sheepskin effect, because anyone who studied 3.9 years instead of 4 is clearly flakey.
I think it might be helpful to taboo the term “standardized employees” here, because I strongly suspect that you and cousin_it are defining the term differently.
cousin_it seems to be suggesting that education tends to produce people who have a similar skillset or body of knowledge. This is what having a degree implies; that one has attained a certain level of knowledge that an educational institution has deemed acceptable to qualify for receiving the degree. This is part of the reason why employers look for various degree levels, as the level of degree implies a certain level of knowledge necessary for the job that the employer will not need to take the time to impart themselves.
You, on the other hand, seem to be referring to how one acts on the job as the primary meaning of “standardization”. Ability to conform is, to a certain degree, a useful trait in most jobs, but it isn’t necessarily a trait that is imparted via formal education. Further, one’s ability to conform usually has very little to do with one’s ability to actually perform the job in question, since lacking the knowledge that forms the basis of the job is not something that can necessarily be covered up by conforming.