[Eddy_Viscosity2]

You see this all the time. Like college degrees for example. They did studies that showed if you got a university degree you would earn X times more than someone who didn't. But that was only the case because a relatively small percentage of people did go to college. Once EVERYONE has a college degree, this doesn't work anymore.

[dghlsakjg]

College degrees is a bad example to use. Even today, a bachelors degree is highly correlated with a massive earnings boost compared to a high school only education.

Sources: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1jqzJ

[adamtaylor_13]

I doubt that's the intrinsic value of the degree (a la supply and demand), but rather the mindset, social-economic status, and background of someone that goes to college. (At least in the US)

[adamredwoods]

While having a strong position in social-economic class is indeed influential, data shows even an associate's degree helps increase long term salary.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cba/annual-earnin...

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

Exactly this, the degree is used as a proxy for the actual qualities that employers for certain higher paying positions are screening for. But that's not what they tell you. They tell you that 'having a degree will get you a high paying job'. This stops being the case if the everyone has a degree and the proxy relationship no longer works. The honest thing to say is have the correct "mindset, social-economic status, and background" and you will get a high paying job.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

If every single high school graduate then got a bachelors degree, would their median earnings match the median earnings of the of the bachelors degree group now? It doesn't seem likely. Otherwise we can just mail every single person a bachelors degree certificate in the mail and watch the salaries increase, productivity sore, the economy on permanent boom!

[philipkglass]

500 years ago literacy commanded a substantial "skills premium" on earnings relative to the larger illiterate population. Today most people in the work force are literate and literacy is not a distinguishing quality for higher earnings. But on a societal level, I don't think that developed nations could be as prosperous as they are today if literacy were as uncommon now as it was 500 years ago.

To relate this to your bachelor's degree example, if everyone earned a bachelor's degree in e.g. physics then the earnings premium for STEM graduates would drop if not vanish. But I expect that society's collective material prosperity would increase. I say "earned" rather than "got mailed a certificate" because getting a certificate without developing the corresponding abilities is not useful.

[dghlsakjg]

The bachelors degree is not a piece of paper in the same way that a long resume is not the same as experience gained. Either is useless if they are not representative of an underlying truth.

The point of the experience is that it allows you to produce more value with the same inputs.

To wit: nations with higher educational attainment do not see the averaging that you suggest, instead they see rather remarkable standards of living.

[bumby]

I think the real question is: how much of the degree is a signal and how much is an actual increase in knowledge/ability? I know since economists have done work on this and, to my memory, it’s split about 50/50.

If it slides too far to the signal side, it becomes a bad proxy. Considering grade inflation is a thing, I wonder how much of that relationship gets eroded

[lancesells]

Don't you think it's correlated to the person having an education and skillset that someone who didn't earn the degree would normally not have?

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

Of course I think that education matters and is the important thing here. But employers require a degree (i.e. the piece of paper) so that's the thing they are using as a proxy and so that's the thing that may decide whether you get a job (or even an interview).

[mock-possum]

Plus if you have the means to attend college to begin with and then the drive and discipline to graduate, chances are you will also have the resources to establish a career.