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James_Miller comments on Signaling of what, precisely? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Lots of the human capital students acquire in college relates to conscientiousness, i.e. learning to get up early for classes and turn in work on time even though, unlike with high school, your parents are not there to remind and pressure you.
Thanks. It's not clear though that college provides good training in conscientiousness. Admittedly, college is better training for conscientiousness than high school, or playing video games. But how does it compare to actual work (even unskilled work)? College students have a very flexible lifestyle in general, and the large prevalence of "party-through-college" types attests to the fact that one can get through college without working very hard if that's what one wishes to do.
Incidentally, the college premium has been rising at the same time as the amount of self-reported hours spent by students in college has been falling; see http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/05/slacker_u.html
It doesn't matter whether they are good at training conscientiousness, as long as they are good at marking it consistently with high grades. If I higher people with BS from Caltech and someone asks me whether I hire them because Caltech is good at training them or good at marking them, my answer is somewhere between "who cares" and "marking them, I don't care how they GOT to be good, just that the Caltech brand means they are good."
I cannot be the only person who had no trouble getting up at five in the morning for money but found getting up at ten verging on impossible in college. No one cares what you do in college but if you don't show up for work you won't get paid. I'm not sure whether people like me support your argument or not. Maybe I'm just a workaholic with a high discount factor.
Lots of employers care about grades. If you don't get As at my school, you don't get a job at an investment bank.
My failure to write precisely strikes again. As long as your work process isn't illegal or against a relevant code of conduct no one cares how you got your grades. This does rather speak against what I wrote above. College is a four year adventure in less supervision than you will have at work.