| >The best and biggest employers should have the best information on the value of college education (in whole and in terms of its parts, such as humanities courses). Depends how one defines "best"; though this is debatable, because one could say that these are the most beholden to the signaling arms race despite the data they may have to the contrary (i.e alphabet, amazon, et al). >In my view the elephant in the room is that maybe a college education is valuable after all, but we haven't put our finger on the precise reason. I don't think this is the elephant in the room at all, people routinely say that some parts of a college education can be valuable for various reasons, while others (as judged by value by the marketability of the graduates) are not valuable at all. In my view, the "best" and biggest employers like it because it signals some default level of competence (which is growing weaker as the incentives are to push everyone through to get some kind of degree) as well as relative malleability and conformance to institutionalized authority (those who opted out, or didn't go might not conform to the corporate identity or end up making it expensive for the employer to employ them, compared to their counter parts; after all, hiring based on objective measurements/metrics without any human involvement isn't something that happens today). Also these companies are largely affected by the turnover rates compared to smaller ones, so it's easier to target colleges graduates as a cohort. >If there's an information arbitrage going on here, somebody should be able to make money from it. I do think some employers take advantage of this environment, though I doubt it's alphabets, amazons, and apples… |