Current Events > Surprising result: reducing college credit reqs leads to reduction in wages

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1418947681746100235?s=19

---

Causation=/=Correlation

---

Solid Snake07 posted...

Causation=/=Correlation

Indeed. However they have constructed an observational study design that can estimate causality.

---

Godnorgosh posted...

More requirements means workers with those criteria met are less replaceable, therefore they're able to demand higher wages. The fact that people with more required credentials under their belts earn more could also be a function of the fact that they are less replaceable. The credentials could be valuable in and of themselves or not.

That's not at all to dismiss the value of education; I just don't think this study proves what this guy on Twitter thinks it does.

I mean, the credentials didn't change from one time point to the next, the requirements for them did. What that suggests is the requirements matter as well, not just the credentials.

Saying that an increase in requirements makes people less replaceable is supporting the point.

---

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5664c583e4b0c0bb910ceb3b/t/59f7660b0d929778aaa2d2ad/1509385740757/Arteaga_HK_OCT2.pdf

Article itself, rather than the tweet about it.

is the implication here that HR reads students' transcripts and decides salary based on coursework taken?

if so, lolololol

Using data from the recruitment process for economists at the Central Bank from 2008 to 2014,
I find that for graduates of Los Andes, the probability of being hired fell by 17 percentage points
after the reform.

Found the problem.

There was no control group, so there's no baseline for comparison. Wage reduction can be explained away by the 2008 economic downturn, otherwise.

Fam_Fam posted...

is the implication here that HR reads students' transcripts and decides salary based on coursework taken?

if so, lolololol

Author looked into interviews with employers and suggests students performed worse during recruitment, closing doors to higher paying jobs.

Could just be an effect of age, given that a reduction in the number of semesters required is directly confounded. Students just haven't spent as much time while being expected to act like an adult.

---

Questionmarktarius posted...

Found the problem.

There was no control group, so there's no baseline for comparison. Wage reduction can be explained away by the 2008 economic downturn, otherwise.

Read more of the paper.

There was a control group, differences-in-differences requires it.

---

Godnorgosh posted...

Curious, has there been a similar study comparing people with some college but no degree against people with no college?

Probably, but that has fundamental issues in design, primarily biased selection effects.

Here because the reduction in education was out of the participants control, and you can restrict the analysis to people who entered the uni prior to rule change, but had the rule change shorten their education, you can rule that type of thing out.

---

https://towardsdatascience.com/causal-inference-using-difference-in-differences-causal-impact-and-synthetic-control-f8639c408268

I found this primer on these kinds of observational designs and it's pretty accessible and even has a guided tutorial in R for those unfamiliar and wish to know more.

---

Up

---

10-20%? Wouldn't that amount to all the superfluous shit they make you take before you can actually get to your major

---

Guide posted...

10-20%? Wouldn't that amount to all the superfluous shit they make you take before you can actually get to your major

Looks like it on average chopped off a little more than a semester.

---

COVxy posted...

Author looked into interviews with employers and suggests students performed worse during recruitment, closing doors to higher paying jobs.

Could just be an effect of age, given that a reduction in the number of semesters required is directly confounded. Students just haven't spent as much time while being expected to act like an adult.

so what you're saying is the difference was their performance in interviews (related to their skills/knowledge), not the change in requirements itself (i.e., they did not have enough credits, and so they were given less money). if it's possible to help students develop skills with fewer requirements (if curricula are designed more efficiently to cover job related skills rather than bloated crap), then students can get jobs with fewer requirements/gatekeepers.