This post seems to implicitly assume a monocausal explanation. It gives good reasons why various proposed explanations are not sufficient to explain university attendance and dismisses those explanations because they aren’t sufficient. The reality is more likely a complex mix of different reasons, and the right question isn’t which one is the reason; it’s how much of the reason is each proposed explanation.
The Sheepskin Effect makes it pretty clear that a significant portion of the value is signaling (Wikipedia cites Caplan as claiming that “over 60% of the economic benefit” is from the degree, though it’s hard to disentangle signaling effects from selection effects). Failure to complete an almost-completed degree seems more likely to be a failure of conscientiousness than of intelligence or conformity, so that part is probably mainly conscientiousness signaling.
This post seems to implicitly assume a monocausal explanation. It gives good reasons why various proposed explanations are not sufficient to explain university attendance and dismisses those explanations because they aren’t sufficient. The reality is more likely a complex mix of different reasons, and the right question isn’t which one is the reason; it’s how much of the reason is each proposed explanation.
The Sheepskin Effect makes it pretty clear that a significant portion of the value is signaling (Wikipedia cites Caplan as claiming that “over 60% of the economic benefit” is from the degree, though it’s hard to disentangle signaling effects from selection effects). Failure to complete an almost-completed degree seems more likely to be a failure of conscientiousness than of intelligence or conformity, so that part is probably mainly conscientiousness signaling.