It could be that people who are driven or passionate, on average, want to pursue higher education, or that they take on risks, exercise their brains in learning endeavors, and it’s their effort and drive that leads to success.
It’s entirely possible that high earners have college degrees because they were told that to be successful, they had to go to college. It’s a belief they were raised with.
I think it’s highly misguided that we give college so much credit. And we also demonstrate survivorship bias where those who went to college but didn’t get the pay off are blamed for having made some wrong decision.
We treat higher education as a silver bullet and put it on a pedestal when it’s not.
Also if companies gain a substantial advantage using other signals outside of degrees, you can be guaranteed that their competitors in their industry will follow. In media and marketing, degrees have long been abandoned for other signals such as portfolios and social media engagement
> Yeah, but you are assuming people only go to college for its educational value , ...
But that's exactly the point, a huge expectation of going to college is the whole college experience: building independence, lifelong friendships, extracurriculars, etc. 50k for Zoom? Fuck that.
Children literally taking out 5 and 6 figure loans for a glorified multi-year vacation with some half arsed “education” strapped to it.
Yeah, but you are assuming people only go to college for its educational value , ignoring that college grads tend to have much higher wages and lower unemployment compared to high school grads. If you look at FIRE subs for example, almost everyone who attains early retirement has a degree. The college wage premium is amplified by both higher wages and higher returns from investments by investing said wages in rapidly appreciating stocks and real estate (the post-2009 bull market in real estate and stocks, on an real basis, exceeds even the '80s and '90s).