In a world where some but not all programs are “diploma treadmills,” you would expect that the reputation of the bad credentials would go down and the good credentials would go up. In some sense if the credentials were really being used (and not just as a perfunctory first pass elimination), you’d expect the most elite programs to have the highest signal to noise ratio. But the market doesn’t seem to respond to changes in credentialing capability (by hiring more from programs that start focusing on the “right” things to test). Instead it’s really just a background check.
> you would expect that the reputation of the bad credentials would go down and the good credentials would go up.
We should expect this if employers can efficiently and objectively evaluate a candidate's skills without relying on credentials. When they're unable to, we should worry about this information asymmetry leading to a "market for lemons" [0]. I found an article [1] about how this could play out:
> This scenario leads to a clear case of information asymmetry since only the graduate knows whether their degree reflects real proficiency, while employers have no reliable way to verify this. This mirrors the classic “Market for Lemons” concept introduced by economist George Akerlof in 1970, where the presence of low-quality goods (or in this case, under-skilled graduates) drives down the perceived value of all goods, due to a lack of trustworthy signals.
In the US, it's also because there are so many options that it's not feasible to have a clear ranking of schools outside of the extreme ends of the spectrum.
> But the market doesn’t seem to respond to changes in credentialing capability
I mean, it certainly seems to. I've been in hiring roles in tech for 20-ish years, and have definitely seen changes in how college hire patterns based on credential values. Some schools have gone way up in how much we value their credentials (Waterloo), some have gone somewhat down (MIT), etc.
