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Vladimir_M comments on What Is Signaling, Really? - Less Wrong
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Possibly a side issue, but one motivation for signalling occurs when measurement is difficult for some reason e.g. regulation.
Giving prospective employees an IQ test can be quite hazardous for the employer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_and_public_policy
Spending $50,000 on college - and incurring toxic student debt in the process - to prove something that can be demonstrated by a $500 test seems strange, in the absence of other factors. Particularly when colleges use a near-IQ test (SAT) as one important criterion for admission!
College degrees are better signals for conscientiousness than intelligence, which is no coincidence, since employers in real life care more about conscientiousness.
Conformity too. This is a factor often overlooked in discussions of this sort.
(There are in fact two ways in which education signals conformity. The first one is the fact that you have conformed to the social norm that you are supposed to signal your intelligence and conscientiousness with this particular costly and wasteful endeavor, not in some alternative way that would signal these traits just as well. The second one is that you have successfully functioned for several years in an institution that enforces an especially high level of conformity with certain norms of behavior that are especially important in a professional context.)
(Conformity can feel like consistency from the inside.)