Comment by dan-robertson
Comment by dan-robertson 3 days ago
Maybe one thing to keep in mind is that there are a big range of colleges in the US. If you go to a poorly regarded party school then probably you have a good time and maybe even get some useful connections out of it, but the main advantage is presumably being able to check the ‘college degree’ box when applying to relatively ordinary jobs. If you go to Harvard then (a) you pay much less if you have limited means and (b) your future prospects are probably significantly better from the experience (this is a bit complicated – a lot of the good outcomes are due to capable and ambitious inputs so the direct benefit of the degree is more limited).
It is easy to read something about one subset of universities while subconsciously thinking of a different subset (eg all universities vs well-known / highly regarded / similar ones to your own).
When some survey says that people no longer see the value in the degree, it obviously doesn’t mean that no college is worth it.
Another thing: a lot of recent wage growth was in the lower end of the income distribution so better alternatives is part of the decreased desirability of college.
The signalling hypothesis (of Bryan Caplan [1]) lurks within your two premises. Neither the poorly regarded party school nor Harvard add much in the way of human capital. What both do is act as honest signals of intelligence, ability, conscientiousness, and resourcefulness (including family resources). These are extremely valuable indicators for prospective employers who are otherwise prohibited (by law) from asking or testing these directly and punished (through wasted wages, training costs, benefits) for making a mistake.
In the past it was much cheaper to train people on the job because wages and benefits were much lower. Higher education has driven up wages and benefit costs (through inflation and cost disease), thus cementing higher education’s position as a gatekeeper.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education?wpr...