I’m not sure I understand. This study doesn’t really seem to distinguish between what the economist says it’s distinguishing.
The economist appears to be arguing that this study indicates that elite colleges lead to higher wages due to signaling and not the quality of education.
However, the study basically compares the wages of people who scored about the same in the standardized exams after separating those who made it into the elite colleges and those who didn’t. The ones who made it into the elite colleges appeared to make more money than those who didn’t.
So basically, this study tells us that going to an elite college helped someone make more money than someone else who had about the same intelligence (as defined by their standardized test scores to enter the college) but went to a non elite college.
However, unlike what the economist is claiming, this does not tell us whether this effect is because of signaling, or because the quality of education is better. The economist claims that the study indicates its signaling, but the higher earnings could very well be explained by better instruction in the elite colleges as well.
I also suspect those who went to elite colleges feel far more pressure to inflate their reported earnings relative to those who didn’t.
The study being referenced compares college exit exams as well as mean salaries. They found that the exit exams were not significantly different between people who went to elite vs non elite colleges. This doesn’t prove but might suggest that a better education is not what explains the higher salaries.
There ain't no such thing as standardized exit exams for colleges - especially for the elite rung of the colleges. My college department's professors set their exam papers as did every other faculty in similar colleges - so it's really puzzling what this article is arguing.
Lower rung universities do have papers set by the university for all colleges affiliated with that university but again every university sets their own exams.
There are also entrance exams for MBA schools which are entire different beast and not really connected to what you study in Bachelor's
(Source: studied in the said elite Indian colleges)
> The study being referenced compares college exit exams
How can you have a common exit exam for people who have studied different degrees? No two degrees cover the same content.
Is it covering baseline content that you could expect anyone to know no matter what degree they did... well then I guess that explains why everyone would get the same score!
Recruiters want to optimize for success (because it means they’ll get commission) so they rely on easy low-effort proxy signals like school name and referrals within the company to help filter who they engage with during their limited time for the hiring process. As a broad rule of thumb, it works even if there are false positives and false negatives.
Exactly, they don't show how these people performed in a standardized exit test _after_ college, so there's no way to measure how well they did relative to each other in terms of education.
There are also non-academic success factors to consider in earnings over time. Family connections and wealth, personal networks, personality, tenacity, etc.
The economist appears to be arguing that this study indicates that elite colleges lead to higher wages due to signaling and not the quality of education.
However, the study basically compares the wages of people who scored about the same in the standardized exams after separating those who made it into the elite colleges and those who didn’t. The ones who made it into the elite colleges appeared to make more money than those who didn’t.
So basically, this study tells us that going to an elite college helped someone make more money than someone else who had about the same intelligence (as defined by their standardized test scores to enter the college) but went to a non elite college.
However, unlike what the economist is claiming, this does not tell us whether this effect is because of signaling, or because the quality of education is better. The economist claims that the study indicates its signaling, but the higher earnings could very well be explained by better instruction in the elite colleges as well.
I also suspect those who went to elite colleges feel far more pressure to inflate their reported earnings relative to those who didn’t.