It seems to me there's good causal evidence that if you finish for your college, you will end up healthier for the rest of your life. Do the alternatives to college give you that same benefit? Well, whenever we talk about the statistics of college, I think at even setting aside causality, right? But clearly there's a selection effect, right? Even college.Yeah, yeah, yeah. And those measurement issues, I think it's very different to say how does it make sense to act in the system as it exists today and how should the system be, right? That's different because for an individual person, they can't change the system. So yes, absolutely. If
When looking at the U.S. labor market, Byron Auguste sees too many job seekers screened out based on shallow signals like a bachelor’s degree, and too few ‘screened in’ by directly demonstrating the skills needed for the job at hand. To close those opportunity gaps in the American workforce, Byron co-founded and runs Opportunity@Work, which played a key role in Maryland’s decision in early 2022 to drop four-year degree requirements for thousands of state jobs in favor of recruiting from those identified as being Skilled Through Alternate Routes, or STARs.
He joined Tyler to discuss workforce training in the digital economy, re-evaluating college degree requirements in recruitment, why IQ is overrated and conscientiousness is underrated, the major opportunity gap in on-the-job training, what people miss about the German apprenticeship model, the best novel about finding a job, what’s gone wrong with American men, why we need signal pluralism for higher education admission, why he’s wary of AI for predicting labor outcomes, what happened when Maryland rolled back degree requirements for state jobs, the incentive problems in higher education, and more.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.
Recorded September 6th, 2022 Other ways to connect