[kenko]

For that matter, is someone who went to trade school or got an apprenticeship or went into a manufacturing job a nonconformist?

Equally laughable is the idea that "going to college signals conformity to organizations that want you to be a conformist in order to work there".

Right, that's exactly what going to, say, Deep Springs, or St. John's, say, signals. I signalled conformity by going to a school with a rep for weirdos and grinds, and concentrating in something widely agreed not to have much direct relationship to the business world (and which has an observable correlation with disputatiousness and disrespect for ipsedixitry)---of course!

It's true that going to college is the default option for people in the middle class or above (or who wish to join the middle class or above), but it's simply fallacious to conclude that if you don't go to college you don't go out of nonconformity. Your action doesn't conform, but that doesn't in any deep sense make you a nonconformist. (The person who decides to raise an unexpected child might well be very much a conformist.)

Caplan strikes me as one of those people who can't distinguish between the novel or unusual and the praiseworthy.