School is all about signaling, not skill-building • Hacker News Board

Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#201

Post by mcguire » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 8:04 PM UTC

xondono wrote: post #86

rjf72 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One key thing this paragraph misses is the characterization of this sort of person. Imagine we have a person that would independently, without extrinsic reward or 'push', show up to classes completely of their own accord. And we must further assume that they would engage in all assignments and somehow try to regularly test their understanding - the feedback exams offer is crucial to demonstrating understanding. And w…

>The point of this is that none of this has anything to do with signaling, but it also has very little to do with the quality of education received. The value of an e.g. Princeton degree is that you're the sort of person that could get accepted into Princeton. [..] The degree just works as 'proof of filtering'. That is precisely what signalling means. Top colleges pick only does who have signalled being over 99.99% o…

How long do you think their signalling value would last if they selected the same group of students, sent them to Aruba for four years, and then handed them diplomas?

Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#202

Post by mcguire » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 8:06 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #119

rjf72 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One key thing this paragraph misses is the characterization of this sort of person. Imagine we have a person that would independently, without extrinsic reward or 'push', show up to classes completely of their own accord. And we must further assume that they would engage in all assignments and somehow try to regularly test their understanding - the feedback exams offer is crucial to demonstrating understanding. And w…

> The point of this is that none of this has anything to do with signaling, but it also has very little to do with the quality of education received. Ability. You’re talking about ability. Caplan estimates that on average the return from education is ~70% signalling and ability, 30% changes in human capital if I remember right.

Does he break down signalling and ability?

Those two seem to me to be vastly different things.

Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#203

Post by mcguire » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 8:36 PM UTC

chongli wrote: post #136

Zarath wrote: post #62

Come on, have we really swung so far on the "game is rigged" and "college isn't what it used to be" pendulum that we're acting like college doesn't build useful skills. Before college I had never written a program in my life outside of my TI-83. Coming out of college I was able to secure a full time job at a highly respected software company. They didn't hire me because my program was great (it wasn't that great), bu…

This article is just a companion piece for the author's book, The Case Against Education [1]. I'm reading this book for philosophy class and one of my top questions going in was "what about the engineers?" Well, Caplan heads that off at the pass: his father was an engineer and he says repeatedly that vocational degrees like engineering and medicine are about more than signalling. His earnings data prove that point, t…

Does he have anything to say about the difference between the engineering and engineering technology degrees?

(The only firm difference I know is that, if you have the latter, you need not apply to any NASA engineering job.)

Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#204

Post by mcguire » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 8:39 PM UTC

dash2 wrote: post #78

Article was fine until this: These behaviors make perfect sense if — and only if — employers are eager to detect workers who dutifully confirm to social expectations. In a society where parents, teachers and peers glorify graduation, failing classes and dropping out are deviant acts. This is a misunderstanding. Employers pay attention to qualifications, e.g. on a CV, as an informational shortcut. If you don't get the…

Weirdly, when I was leaving for college, I was warned that spending any time at a big school like UT Austin would end up making me a deviant. There was talk about someone's cousin who came back from Austin wearing leather and with a nose ring. Lesbianism was a possibility.

Certainly, nobody thought college was for those who conform to social expectations.

Not at all sure if I came out deviant or just crazy.

Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#205

Post by mcguire » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #40

kevintb wrote: post #33

I strongly disagree. Elite colleges are all about signaling. But I don't doubt for a second that my CS degree taught me an enormous amount - some skill-building, lots of abstract thinking - that I wouldn't have been able to achieve as quickly as anywhere else.

Most colleges aren't elite. The vast majority of college graduates do not go to elite colleges. It's myopic to think of elite schools as "all schools" as so many articles do. Seriously, rankings are so pointless. I personally value someone's skills, not what institution they obtained them from. I guess for our society's elite, it's their version of keeping up with Joneses. Or maybe the upper class feels the need for…

There are "elite schools". But there are also sub-par, "diploma mill" schools.

The majority of colleges are probably in the middle, doing their best to teach the majority of students. However, the institution does matter.

Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#206

Post by mcguire » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 8:48 PM UTC

kevintb wrote: post #70

BadassFractal wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having gone to 2 of the top 5 US CS programs, I would have likely learned more about CS as an autodidact vs learning from researchers, barely speaking English, dragged kicking and screaming into doing lectures they visibly couldn't care less about. It did give me direct access to FAANG though, which was convenient and I wouldn't have gotten from some random community college. It goes back to credentialing and signali…

Perhaps for you; not for my experience. Also, you get as much as you put in. I’ve had plenty of awful professors but found ways to study in my own time, do my own projects and read papers on top of the curriculum I was learning. You can’t expect to passively receive the best possible education by top notch teachers, especially in research institutions. Lastly, your first sentence neatly proves my point that elite/“to…

I've had plenty of awful professors, too, but some of the best I had were excellent researchers, both mid- or late career or just out of grad school themselves.

Not sure what that means.

Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#207

Post by adamnemecek » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 8:56 PM UTC

Godel_unicode wrote: post #181

adamnemecek wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I felt that e.g. drawing was mostly figure drawing rather than say car designs.

Why is one of them for male students and one not? Because those are your preferences?

You are looking for something that isn’t there.

It’s because I wasn’t provided the other option and I’ve noticed that the preferences we pretty neatly aligned along the gender lines.

Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#208

Post by mcguire » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 9:01 PM UTC

osdiab wrote: post #55

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #49

I think the article seriously underestimated the effort to make it through a thre year degree at an elite college - let's say an MIT mechanical engineering degree - my understanding it is 80 hour weeks, with yearly inflection points where the faculty will try and eliminate the bottom 10% or so. get a first or 2.1 there and you are not signalling attendance but genuine effort. (Any alumni able to comment? ) There are…

I went to Stanford for Computer Science, and from my friends who went to Ohio State, equivalent courses sound significantly harder there to me - not much grade inflation, larger amounts of work. It’s anecdotal but I think the primary difference is the power of the network you interact with - which feeds a virtuous cycle of ambition and drive, given how empowering having that network is. Not the difficulty or rigor of…

Ohio State is a fairly well respected CS program. (And I'm not just saying that because one of my advisor's more successful students is on the faculty.)

https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-sch...

US News puts them at #30, but that's really the 13th group---there's a lot of ties.

I think I disagree with that list though---there's many schools higher in the list that I've never read a paper from. They can't be good.

(UT Austin has dropped to 10th!! I think I want my money back.)

Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#209

Post by mcguire » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 9:17 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #106

lasagnaphil wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korea actually kinda does this (your university depends on one single test), and the results aren’t that pretty...

Can you expand on what you mean by "aren't that pretty"?

Not sure what the GP was thinking, but I'd imagine having the future course of your life decided by a single day (or week or whatever) of standardized testing is, well, unpretty.

Re: School is all about signaling, not skill-building

#210

Post by davidivadavid » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 9:21 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #172

>> Bryan Caplan is professor of economics at George Mason University and author of “The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money.” Here I was thinking this was an article that genuinely sought to engage my opinion, when in truth it was only an advert for someone's book. I think I'll make it a habit from now on to scroll all the way to the bottom of opinion articles to save myself…

Trying to engage people's opinion is generally an advert for someone's ideas.