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VipulNaik comments on Signaling of what, precisely? - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: VipulNaik 16 September 2013 05:12PM

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Comment author: VipulNaik 16 September 2013 07:23:21PM *  4 points [-]

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

Comment author: mwengler 17 September 2013 09:06:42PM 1 point [-]

Thanks. It's not clear though that college provides good training in conscientiousness.

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."