A tale of signalling: post-secondary education and COVID-19 policies

A university education is not what it seems. The usual story, the one that makes us feel all warm and fuzzy, tells us that a university education – regardless of discipline – builds critical thinking skills, engenders a worldly view, and creates an informed citizen. We are empty vessels into which the fount of knowledge pours forth, filling us with enlightenment. Students graduate with skills that command a higher wage as they contribute more to society. But there is an alternative story that equally explains the facts. A university education is a signalling mechanism that does not pour knowledge into empty vessels, but instead sorts like jeweler’s loupe. Think about it. Most people can’t remember much of what they studied at university. In this story, a university education is a giant IQ test, coupled to a test of perseverance and conscientiousness. Students graduate with a signal that says they’re generally smarter than average and can put up with a lot of tediousness for years, and that’s exactly what an employer needs. Students who graduate had all the requisite attributes the day they entered university and the purpose of the degree program is to show the world they in fact have them. Who cares if you can’t remember the details of your liberal arts degree? Your employer certainly won’t. But your employer will care that they’re getting what they paid for – someone who can get a university degree. In truth, the human improvement and the signalling story are simultaneously true and the relative weight of each varies across degree programs. Bryan Caplan, an economist at George Mason University, has an excellent book on the subject, The Case Against Education: Why The Education System is a Waste of Time and Money.

CTV News London has an interesting story, A tale of two institutions: Western and Fanshawe deviate on return-to-school COVID-19 policies, that nicely illustrations the nature of signalling. Western University has opted to make COVID-19 boosters mandatory for all staff and students as well as to demand in-door masking at least until Thanksgiving. On the other hand, Fanshawe College will not implement masking or a vaccine policy this fall citing the Middlesex-London Health Unit. These two post-secondary institutions are in the same city (London, Ontario) with students of the same age. So why the difference? How is “the science” different at Western than at Fanshawe? Of course there’s no difference in the science, but the institutions fill subtly different roles in society. As a university, Western has a much larger signalling component in its diplomas than Fanshawe’s, an institution that operates more as a technical trade school. Students at each institution seek different products with different sensitivities to signalling, often coming from differing socio-economic circumstances.

Increasingly, adherence to high risk averse COVID-19 polices match political affiliation. Wearing a mask while riding a bike with no helmet – and I see this behaviour nearly every day in downtown Ottawa! – is a signal of political beliefs. We shouldn’t be surprised to see those institutions which trade in a signalling market, composed mostly of people from the urban upper middle class, will on average demand stricter COVID-19 policies two and a half years after the start of the pandemic.

Disclaimer: I attended Western for my undergraduate and I had an amazing time. It’s a great school and I learned amazing things from phenomenal minds. But I’m a bit weird. To me, going to class is a form of recreation, even a form of entertainment; it’s an end in itself.