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School is all about signaling, not skill-building

latimes.com

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

#81

Post by danenania »

rjf72 wrote: post #72
hooch wrote: post #16

“If a student wants to study at Princeton, he doesn’t really need to apply or pay tuition. He can simply show up and start taking classes. As a professor, I assure you that we make near-zero effort to stop unofficial education; indeed, the rare, earnestly curious student touches our hearts. At the end of four years at Princeton, though, the guerrilla student would lack one precious thing: a diploma. The fact that alm…

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…

Adult learners are a demographic that could be highly motivated as you describe but often wouldn’t have any chance of getting in through the application process of an elite university. There are a lot of intelligent people out there who didn’t engage well with school when they were young for whatever reason but come to place a high value on education later in their lives.

I think this group is quite poorly served by our current system.

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

#82

Post by polymeris »

BadassFractal wrote: post #43
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.

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…

I don't have an opinion on the benefits of schools and degrees, since I don't have one, but I am sure you could have gone work for FAANG after 4 years of autodidact learning and work experience, as well.

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

#83

Post by graycat »

hooch wrote: post #16

“If a student wants to study at Princeton, he doesn’t really need to apply or pay tuition. He can simply show up and start taking classes. As a professor, I assure you that we make near-zero effort to stop unofficial education; indeed, the rare, earnestly curious student touches our hearts. At the end of four years at Princeton, though, the guerrilla student would lack one precious thing: a diploma. The fact that alm…

Yes, but he might stick around and take and pass the Ph.D. qualifying exams and then be well on his way to a Princeton degree: At least at one time, the Princeton math department Web site stated that, IIRC, "students are expected to prepare for the qualifying exams on their own and that no courses are offered to prepare students for the qualifying exams. Courses are introductions to research by experts in their fields."

So, look at the qualifying exams, see what might study, and while attending classes attend the ones that can help with the exams.

In addition, might have available some profs to answer questions.

In addition, likely one way to impress Princeton or any university is to publish, and one way to start to do that is to attend research seminars and see what some of the open questions are, also notice what some of the profs and grad students are working on. So, this way get some guidance on what might attack as a research problem.

I got a good pure/applied math Ph.D. Well over 50% of what I needed and used for courses, the qualifying exams, and my research was what I'd studied independently after my 4 year college degree and start of grad school.

Then a grad course in optimization gave a good introduction to the Kuhn-Tucker condition, maybe say Karush-Kuhn-Tucker. After the course I saw a tricky question about the constraint qualifications, didn't see an answer in the library, so signed up for a 'reading course' to 'investigate' the question. Two weeks later I had a nice, clean solution, wrote it up, and was done with the course -- two weeks. Later I published. There I'd noticed that my work also answered a question stated but not solved in the famous Arrow, Hurwicz, Uzawa paper applying the KKTC to economics. I published in JOTA.

So, a 'walk in' student at Princeton might have been able to have done much the same. With such research and passing the qualifying exams they would be on the way to a Princeton Ph.D.

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

#84

Post by tylerhou »

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…

The author is an econ professor at George Mason.

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

#86

Post by xondono »

rjf72 wrote: post #72
hooch wrote: post #16

“If a student wants to study at Princeton, he doesn’t really need to apply or pay tuition. He can simply show up and start taking classes. As a professor, I assure you that we make near-zero effort to stop unofficial education; indeed, the rare, earnestly curious student touches our hearts. At the end of four years at Princeton, though, the guerrilla student would lack one precious thing: a diploma. The fact that alm…

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% of the population in things like intelligence, conformity and work ethics, then they filter out a bunch of them that never end up their degrees, and now their having their degree signals that you are a top 99.999% worker.

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

#87

Post by sorokod »

sanxiyn wrote: post #27
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #23

Maybe for the elite. But for middle class people like myself, I developed marketable skills, secured multiple internships, and found it easy to get a full-time job straight out of school. I had about a years worth of industry experience via internships (one for 6 months, two others 3 months each). Signaling doesn't buy you much. At least in engineering, because a technical interview will sort out whether or not you a…

Yes, Software Engineering is a super special exception that does not apply anywhere else.

Assuming you are not being sarcastic, could you enumerate the main reasons as to why software engineering is super special?

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

#89

Post by xondono »

tylerhou wrote: post #84
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…

The author is an econ professor at George Mason.

The author has a book on the subject and is one of the main proponents of signalling in education :D

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

#90

Post by nickthemagicman »

hooch wrote: post #16

“If a student wants to study at Princeton, he doesn’t really need to apply or pay tuition. He can simply show up and start taking classes. As a professor, I assure you that we make near-zero effort to stop unofficial education; indeed, the rare, earnestly curious student touches our hearts. At the end of four years at Princeton, though, the guerrilla student would lack one precious thing: a diploma. The fact that alm…

Lol this is absolutely false. You would 100% get ejected from a Princeton class room.
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