This has been quite widely studied, actually. Many papers conclude that it’s a mix of causation, there is (unsurprisingly) some amount of actual learning of skills in college, and also (unsurprisingly) some amount of credentialism in the job market.
What does it matter though? Parent was presuming to argue from a students’ perspective. The amount of relative causation might be pretty irrelevant to a student who just wants to know what do to to maximize their chances of having a decent career. From a student’s perspective, lack of causation might even be a stronger reason than otherwise, it potentially means they can enjoy a more lucrative career with less work.
No, the main question is are the highest paid workers getting that because of college, or did the most driven and smartest go to college, and would have been equally successful had no one gone to college?
Back in the day (pre-WW2) most successful people did no go to college. College was for wealthy trust fund kids to spend some time meeting other wealthy trust fund kids, because there just weren't all that many colleges nor any need to go.
That whole college==more money thing didn't start until after WW2.
Yes, that is precisely the question that has been asked & answered, and the general consensus in the academic literature (for example https://www.nber.org/papers/w7322) is that it’s both.
The Fed paper I linked to here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35212497 shows dramatically higher income and wealth premiums for educated people in the 30s and 40s, so you might want to take a peek.
This and other papers are trying as best they can to answer exactly that question, of what if there was no college. Since the hypothetical universe where college never existed doesn’t exist, they have to resort to careful scientific techniques that attempt to factor out every bias we can think of. They’re working with what they have. Papers have, for example, studied the family history of college attendance and adjusted (discounted) for when parents and grandparents attend, they have adjusted for family wealth, for race, for geographic location, for country, for tuition, etc. etc.. You can either accept that they’ve tried rather hard and come up with a reasonable answer, or accept that the question you’re demanding be answered in the specific way you want it answered is not answerable that way, your choice.
Again, I have to ask (since it hasn’t yet been answered yet in this thread) why does this hypothetical question matter from a student’s perspective? Students are deciding what to do in the world that exists now, not in a world where people don’t go to college. All they know is that outcomes are better with a degree that without, on average. If you were choosing college right now, why does it matter what happens in the alternate reality? Don’t you just think about the jobs you want in the future, what you’re interests are and how much money you want to make, and then go or not?
This and other papers are trying as best they can to answer exactly that question, of what if there was no college.
No they don't.
why does this hypothetical question matter from a student’s perspective?"
It doesn't matter from a prospective student's perspective. If someone cares only about their own success (or their children's), it doesn't matter. But it matters for society overall, so it is still worth discussing.
I believe you’re wrong on this point, but please elaborate; why do you think that, and what evidence do you have to back it up? Why do you claim that the papers I’ve already linked to aren’t answering this question? Why do you believe that no others exist? Are you talking about causality still, or are you only claiming that the papers I linked didn’t literally talk about a world without college?
Maybe we need to step back and state our assumptions more carefully. The thread above started by @jletienne asked what is the causal vs correlation split for the outcome of a university education, and then @jedberg presumed to clarify that question by asking what if there was no college, which is one of many ways to ask what is the true causal effect of university education on earnings and outcomes, as opposed to correlations that artificially inflate the perceived value of a degree. If people are more likely to go to college because their parents went, then parents deserve some of the credit, and college doesn’t get all of it. If two jobs make use of exactly the same skills, but one asks for a degree and pays more, then the job gets some of the credit too, and college gets even less.
The question ‘what if there was no college’ is simply a way of clarifying the causality, and so I have assumed we’re still talking about the causality question. Are you still talking about the causality question, or are you moving the goal posts on me? Yes it would be ideal to have a world with no college to compare against. The St. Louis Fed paper, since they have no world without college to study, does a causality analysis on the “true” value of college in section III, where they attempt to discount for correlations with some known biases that inflate that perceived value of a degree compared to the world where college never existed.
I'll paste here GP's question that we're discussing (emphasis mine):
"No, the main question is are the highest paid workers getting that because of college, or did the most driven and smartest go to college, and would have been equally successful had no one gone to college?"
There are a few interesting questions we could ask related to college attendance. The most common ones are:
1. From an individual student's perspective, does going to college have a positive ROI, in a world where the college and employment landscape exists as it does today.
2. If the answer to #1 is yes, how much of this is due to education, and how much is due to pure signalling ("sorting hat") effects?
3. If we were to eliminate all colleges, so that no one has a bachelors' degree, would that reduce the outputs and incomes of the most driven and smartest people.
The papers you cited attempt to address #1 and #2. But neither of those are the question that GP asked (which is #3).
You claim that they do address this question, but are asking me for evidence that they don't. I'm not sure what you're expecting me to do? Go through each and every paragraph in each paper and explain how it doesn't address #3?
It might be easier for you point us to a sentence or paragraph in either paper that envisages a world where no one goes to college.
The question of causality is in fact attempting to answer #3, and it seems like you’re failing to understand that. This is exactly what “true causality” means. The question being asked is whether the outputs and incomes of the smartest people are coming from the education, or from the environment where colleges exist. (Implicitly comparing to a world where no colleges exist.) The Fed study and others are trying to answer whether and how much of the outputs and incomes of the smartest people can be assigned to college, and implicitly calculating what the outcomes would be if colleges did not exist.
> It might be easier for you to point us to a sentence or paragraph in either paper that envisages a world where no one goes to college.
Ah, so you want a literal mention of no college. See this is where it becomes clear that you don’t understand the causality question and you didn’t understand the connection between what @jletienne asked and what @jedberg asked. They are not different questions. You think they are, but they aren’t.
The first name on the study was a Wash U professor for over 25 years. The 2nd name has so far spent a significant amount of her life in academia. Only the 3rd author appears to have spent most of his career in public service.
Nonetheless now they all work for the Fed, so these particular ex-professors lacked the supposed conflict of interest you imagined at the time of publication. Not that I think it matters at all. There are papers on the causality of education from career academics claiming anywhere from little to none, and I haven’t seen any papers claiming it’s very very high, so the broad outcome is exactly the opposite of what would happen in your imagined scenario if it were true and researchers were being defensive and biased about the value of education.
Your comment above is FUD, not based on knowledge of the research or the researchers, but pure speculation, which is why it’s not fair to say.
What does it matter though? Parent was presuming to argue from a students’ perspective. The amount of relative causation might be pretty irrelevant to a student who just wants to know what do to to maximize their chances of having a decent career. From a student’s perspective, lack of causation might even be a stronger reason than otherwise, it potentially means they can enjoy a more lucrative career with less work.