This doesn’t seem to work if the package of signaled traits Z includes conformity, which is e.g. part of the package of traits being signaled by college, and college is probably not unique in having this property. Doing anything other than college is nonconformist, so anyone you can persuade to do it is failing to signal conformity and is actually not maximally conformist. It is really, really hard to create new signals of conformity.
Bryan Caplan explicitly makes the point that college signaling conformity is important in The Case Against Education and it made me realize that I had been really neglecting it as a component of college’s signaling package (along with intelligence, which I had previously focused most of my attention on, and conscientiousness).
Edit: Riffing off of Benquo’s comment, if you think conformity’s just in fact not that important a signal to look for when e.g. hiring talented people, what this suggests is not that you try to create a cheaper signal than college but that you start companies that hire nonconformists, and loudly signal this fact. There’s an open question of to what extent such companies would actually be successful, though. Maybe nonconformists work poorly in teams or something.
This doesn’t seem to work if the package of signaled traits Z includes conformity, which is e.g. part of the package of traits being signaled by college, and college is probably not unique in having this property. Doing anything other than college is nonconformist, so anyone you can persuade to do it is failing to signal conformity and is actually not maximally conformist. It is really, really hard to create new signals of conformity.
Bryan Caplan explicitly makes the point that college signaling conformity is important in The Case Against Education and it made me realize that I had been really neglecting it as a component of college’s signaling package (along with intelligence, which I had previously focused most of my attention on, and conscientiousness).
Edit: Riffing off of Benquo’s comment, if you think conformity’s just in fact not that important a signal to look for when e.g. hiring talented people, what this suggests is not that you try to create a cheaper signal than college but that you start companies that hire nonconformists, and loudly signal this fact. There’s an open question of to what extent such companies would actually be successful, though. Maybe nonconformists work poorly in teams or something.