I’m not sure I understand how you imagine the proposed testing service for intelligence + conscientiousness. Would this test replicate all the exams and thesis-writing of the four-yours college course? If so, as you argue, most people would have hard time being motivated to study for this very long and hard test without the structure of something like a college. Or is the test shorter and easier than the current exam-suit, but still provides equally strong signal, because people study for it with one year of self-study instead of four years of structured college? But then why don’t people still just do something like college to get the motivating structure? It seems pretty hard to me to set up this testing service right.
In general, I’m not sure there are much cheaper ways to legibly signal “this person is able and willing to sit around and do intellectual work for years” than to have the person actually sit around somewhere where their mistakes and potential quitting is low-stakes, and have them do some kind of intellectual work. I.e. college.
Very likely the current college format is not the exact optimal way to provide this signal, but I find it plausible that it’s not that far off from the optimum that standard coordination difficulties and Inadequate equilibria dynamics can explain why it stays in place.
If so, as you argue, most people would have hard time being motivated to study for this very long and hard test without the structure of something like a college.
Yes, that’s right. And so what we’d see if the signaling theory were true is people doing as little college as possible. E.g. you can imagine an externally-administered test (or even just a company interview, like a big tech coding interview) that you sit whenever you feel like you’ve learned a college degree’s worth of material. As an employer, if I see someone who passes this test without any college attendance, I’d be very impressed by their conscientiousness and intelligence. If I see someone who spends two years at college then takes the test, I’d still be impressed. If they spend four years at college then pass the test, then eh, I’m less impressed (but it’s still a better signal than not having passed at all).
In a rational world, the kid who self-taught himself CS in high school then passed a google interview should be much more impressive than the kid who got into Harvard then spent four years studying CS under the best professors in the world then passed the google interview. But somehow the prestige hierarchy is inverted; that’s what we need to explain.
In general, I’m not sure there are much cheaper ways to legibly signal “this person is able and willing to sit around and do intellectual work for years”
From an employer’s perspective, the “years” thing is a distraction; what matters is productivity. If I can spend one month and do the same work that takes you years, then employers should very much want to hire me.
I still think it will be hard to get credible evidence that someone didn’t attend something like college.
As a parallel: Employers value people who got medals at the IMO. Preparing for the IMO doesn’t teach any useful job skills or cultural fit (though maybe it teaches some conscientiousness). So I’m pretty sure that preference for IMO medalists is mostly explained by intelligence+conscientiousness signaling.
It is more impressive to be an IMO silver medalist if one is from Denmark with very little IMO preparation culture than if someone is from Hungary that has specialized schools and extracurricular math training camps. Even within a country, it is more impressive if someone got an IMO silver from a random small-town high school than if they attended the best specialized school in the country. And it’s more impressive if someone didn’t attend the extracurricular math camps than if they did.
But I never heard of any employer screening for any of this. I assume some employers have some heuristic that getting a silver from Africa is more impressive, but I don’t think it’s more fine-grained than that. I never heard of anyone mentioning the Denmark vs Hungary heuristic, or to give extra scores for coming from a small town. I think it’s pretty hard to have legible metrics for all these disadvantages, so HR just doesn’t take them into account.
And I definitely never heard of any student following the galaxy-brained plan of intentionally not enrolling in the best high school, not attending any of the math camps and after-class seminars, meticulously document all of this, and then presenting evidence to future employers that they got an IMO silver while intentionally handicapping their own study.
I expect that your scheme of students demonstrating that they passed the test without doing something like college fails for the same reason—it’s hard to legibly demonstrate that one didn’t do something like college or other structured prepping.
The one credible signal I see is age: if someone passes the big final exam at 19, while everyone else only at 22, that’s legibly more impressive. (Indeed, in the parallel, getting an IMO silver in 10th grade is more prestigious than getting one in 12th grade.)
I think there could be some economic value in setting up the possibility of doing the college final exams at a younger age, but I think the result would be pretty dystopian cram schools during childhood. My guess is that in the West not very many people would take the opportunity to take the test early and then start working at 19, it doesn’t sound very appealing.
I wonder though why it’s not more common in East Asia to just immediately hire people at 18; I don’t know how much additional signal college provides once people demonstrated they can sit through years of cram school and get a high score on their admission exam. But I know very little about East Asia.
I’m not sure I understand how you imagine the proposed testing service for intelligence + conscientiousness. Would this test replicate all the exams and thesis-writing of the four-yours college course? If so, as you argue, most people would have hard time being motivated to study for this very long and hard test without the structure of something like a college. Or is the test shorter and easier than the current exam-suit, but still provides equally strong signal, because people study for it with one year of self-study instead of four years of structured college? But then why don’t people still just do something like college to get the motivating structure? It seems pretty hard to me to set up this testing service right.
In general, I’m not sure there are much cheaper ways to legibly signal “this person is able and willing to sit around and do intellectual work for years” than to have the person actually sit around somewhere where their mistakes and potential quitting is low-stakes, and have them do some kind of intellectual work. I.e. college.
Very likely the current college format is not the exact optimal way to provide this signal, but I find it plausible that it’s not that far off from the optimum that standard coordination difficulties and Inadequate equilibria dynamics can explain why it stays in place.
Yes, that’s right. And so what we’d see if the signaling theory were true is people doing as little college as possible. E.g. you can imagine an externally-administered test (or even just a company interview, like a big tech coding interview) that you sit whenever you feel like you’ve learned a college degree’s worth of material. As an employer, if I see someone who passes this test without any college attendance, I’d be very impressed by their conscientiousness and intelligence. If I see someone who spends two years at college then takes the test, I’d still be impressed. If they spend four years at college then pass the test, then eh, I’m less impressed (but it’s still a better signal than not having passed at all).
In a rational world, the kid who self-taught himself CS in high school then passed a google interview should be much more impressive than the kid who got into Harvard then spent four years studying CS under the best professors in the world then passed the google interview. But somehow the prestige hierarchy is inverted; that’s what we need to explain.
From an employer’s perspective, the “years” thing is a distraction; what matters is productivity. If I can spend one month and do the same work that takes you years, then employers should very much want to hire me.
I still think it will be hard to get credible evidence that someone didn’t attend something like college.
As a parallel: Employers value people who got medals at the IMO. Preparing for the IMO doesn’t teach any useful job skills or cultural fit (though maybe it teaches some conscientiousness). So I’m pretty sure that preference for IMO medalists is mostly explained by intelligence+conscientiousness signaling.
It is more impressive to be an IMO silver medalist if one is from Denmark with very little IMO preparation culture than if someone is from Hungary that has specialized schools and extracurricular math training camps. Even within a country, it is more impressive if someone got an IMO silver from a random small-town high school than if they attended the best specialized school in the country. And it’s more impressive if someone didn’t attend the extracurricular math camps than if they did.
But I never heard of any employer screening for any of this. I assume some employers have some heuristic that getting a silver from Africa is more impressive, but I don’t think it’s more fine-grained than that. I never heard of anyone mentioning the Denmark vs Hungary heuristic, or to give extra scores for coming from a small town. I think it’s pretty hard to have legible metrics for all these disadvantages, so HR just doesn’t take them into account.
And I definitely never heard of any student following the galaxy-brained plan of intentionally not enrolling in the best high school, not attending any of the math camps and after-class seminars, meticulously document all of this, and then presenting evidence to future employers that they got an IMO silver while intentionally handicapping their own study.
I expect that your scheme of students demonstrating that they passed the test without doing something like college fails for the same reason—it’s hard to legibly demonstrate that one didn’t do something like college or other structured prepping.
The one credible signal I see is age: if someone passes the big final exam at 19, while everyone else only at 22, that’s legibly more impressive. (Indeed, in the parallel, getting an IMO silver in 10th grade is more prestigious than getting one in 12th grade.)
I think there could be some economic value in setting up the possibility of doing the college final exams at a younger age, but I think the result would be pretty dystopian cram schools during childhood. My guess is that in the West not very many people would take the opportunity to take the test early and then start working at 19, it doesn’t sound very appealing.
I wonder though why it’s not more common in East Asia to just immediately hire people at 18; I don’t know how much additional signal college provides once people demonstrated they can sit through years of cram school and get a high score on their admission exam. But I know very little about East Asia.