So it would appear the Bryan Caplan thesis is consensus among the sample of HN readers that comment, and that honestly makes me pretty happy because I'm fairly sure it's correct. Still, it's always good to examine things from both sides:
A lot of what the 'costly signaling' genre of comments miss is that a costly signal is very valuable. In the old school system where literally anyone could act as legal representation, it can be difficult to figure out who's trustworthy council. The professionalization of legal representation took away the public's ability to practice law, but it also better enabled them to consistently get competent legal counsel. Is that tradeoff worth it? Plausible.
I feel like a lot of the rankling around licensing and professionalization is because the costs of it are rarely taken into account so we let the commons suffer. The truth is that you can only strictly license and professionalize so many occupations. In a society with limited growth and a need for everyone to be employed being sufficiently risk averse means that economic freedom is stunted. That more than anything else seems to be what people are feeling as they reel from massive college debts and 'hustlers mindset'. Licensing costs are probably nonlinear, your nth license restriction costs more than the last did.
To the extent that college is 'sink or swim' it probably has a conditioning effect. I absolutely hate myself for what I tolerated to get my degree, but I'd be lying if I said the spiritual damage doesn't translate into a burnout who knows how to kill themselves going at stuff they hate. That's a very positive effect from an employability standpoint. Multiple times what I thought would be my psychological breaking point just turned out to be another ratchet on the road to scholastic moksha. It's only when you've learned to hate yourself so thoroughly that you can tolerate anything, that you're ready to handle the level of difficulty and nihilism the modern workplace is likely to present you with. Of course that perspective is closer in spirit to Mussolini than Mill, so you can't exactly advertise it in your universities brochure.
It's very possible if we don't do that somehow, you just can't quite produce the sort of highly disciplined person you need to make society work.
A lot of what the 'costly signaling' genre of comments miss is that a costly signal is very valuable. In the old school system where literally anyone could act as legal representation, it can be difficult to figure out who's trustworthy council. The professionalization of legal representation took away the public's ability to practice law, but it also better enabled them to consistently get competent legal counsel. Is that tradeoff worth it? Plausible.
I feel like a lot of the rankling around licensing and professionalization is because the costs of it are rarely taken into account so we let the commons suffer. The truth is that you can only strictly license and professionalize so many occupations. In a society with limited growth and a need for everyone to be employed being sufficiently risk averse means that economic freedom is stunted. That more than anything else seems to be what people are feeling as they reel from massive college debts and 'hustlers mindset'. Licensing costs are probably nonlinear, your nth license restriction costs more than the last did.
To the extent that college is 'sink or swim' it probably has a conditioning effect. I absolutely hate myself for what I tolerated to get my degree, but I'd be lying if I said the spiritual damage doesn't translate into a burnout who knows how to kill themselves going at stuff they hate. That's a very positive effect from an employability standpoint. Multiple times what I thought would be my psychological breaking point just turned out to be another ratchet on the road to scholastic moksha. It's only when you've learned to hate yourself so thoroughly that you can tolerate anything, that you're ready to handle the level of difficulty and nihilism the modern workplace is likely to present you with. Of course that perspective is closer in spirit to Mussolini than Mill, so you can't exactly advertise it in your universities brochure.
It's very possible if we don't do that somehow, you just can't quite produce the sort of highly disciplined person you need to make society work.