[dash2]

Article was fine until this:

  These behaviors make perfect sense if — and only if — 
  employers are eager to detect workers who dutifully 
  confirm to social expectations. In a society where 
  parents, teachers and peers glorify graduation, failing
  classes and dropping out are deviant acts.

This is a misunderstanding. Employers pay attention to qualifications, e.g. on a CV, as an informational shortcut. If you don't get the qualification, then you are pooling with everyone else who didn't - including nonconformists, but also the incompetent and lazy. If you get the qualification, even only just, then you are in the category with everyone else who did, including brilliant top achievers.

Maybe employers do care about social conformity, maybe even overwhelmingly so - but this evidence doesn't show that. Looks like a journalist misreading the academic literature.

[tylerhou]

The author is an econ professor at George Mason.

[xondono]

The author has a book on the subject and is one of the main proponents of signalling in education :D

[mcguire]

Weirdly, when I was leaving for college, I was warned that spending any time at a big school like UT Austin would end up making me a deviant. There was talk about someone's cousin who came back from Austin wearing leather and with a nose ring. Lesbianism was a possibility.

Certainly, nobody thought college was for those who conform to social expectations.

Not at all sure if I came out deviant or just crazy.

[hopler]

Social expectations vary by social class. The low education religious people you describe are a different social class from educated business and technical professionals

[mcguire]

"Social expectations vary by social class. The low education religious people you describe are a different social class from educated business and technical professionals"

Technically, I can't argue with the "religious" description, since I attended the one cousin's ordination as a Catholic priest a couple of years ago, but prior to that he was a Navy submarine nuke and an NRC inspector. His brother is an engineer with the USACE. And their father was an engineer. And I've known countless "business and technical professionals" less educated than their mother, a Latin teacher.

You may want to consider leaving your bigotry at home.

[IshKebab]

I agree. Employers don't care about people "dutifully conforming to social expectations". They are that a) people can do the job, and b) they aren't super weird and annoying to work with.