Debating a Signaling Model of Education

In the enterprise we used to talk about how many people joined our company simply to 'get their ticket punched'. Based on my own conversations with some people this was very true ... in the case of some people from the very first day. All these people were very smart with strong academic credentials. As the years progressed this became even more common.

What kinds of signals can you get from education, testing and experience to determine if this is true? And more broadly is

" ... a large part of our education spending (perhaps as much as 80%) socially wasteful “signaling.” It is a kind of arms race where students try to get more education than than their rivals in order to signal their conscientiousness, conformity, and intelligence to potential employers. Crucially, however, much of the information learned is actually not needed for their careers; the real objective is just to rack up better-looking credentials than the Joneses in order to look good to employers ... '

The article in the law blog Volkh takes on the debate. Covers lots of things we believed were true, but had a hard time dealing with.
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