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Originally Posted by Scucca  To what extent does that income boost reflect an increase in the individual's productivity? Take an extreme case: If the universities only paid lip service to testing (i.e. only convince the non-student that testing methods were followed), would it have any impact on graduate quality? |
My guess would be a more heavily screened graduate class would perform better on average than a less screened one (same students).
That's due to at least two reasons. 1. Screening. 2. When screening is present and obvious, it is "supervising", and when human work is supervised (includes learning), they will produce more statistically.
So they will be both a better group due to pruning of the worse ones, and better on average per individual due to the "supervising" effect of the testing. Humans are efficient and do not like to do as much work if it's not measured.
Screening will screen for all sorts of things, including potential, actually knowledge/training, and motivation. Not just "what they know". Depending on the job, motivation and potential may be far more important than actual knowledge.
If you mean to imply that simply screening by itself would be far more efficient with a different system, that is true. But training should impart foundation, and diversity, and not be 1:1 with the market. Biology teaches us this in a competitive diverse ecosystem. You don't plan for what you know, you plan for what you do not know, so to speak.
You also do not teach soley for employers, you also teach to bestow opportunity upon the populace, to extract the gems that would otherwise go undiscovered, and as a compliment to a free society where literally anyone can technically get the education to do most anything. Exposure is a big part of that, and exposure and diversity are costly. I would guess not doing this would be even more costly to society in the long run.
Look at any specieis that is hyper-specialized. One small change in environment and extinction.
-Mach