Is knowing how to type well the wrong "signal" to send in the job market one actually aspires to? Perhaps it always has been! Frances Woolley at WCI had an interesting post about this recently, and she was somewhat frustrated that such a useful skill was...well, a great way to increase one's human capital (in this case through practicality), but then in the scheme of things what does human capital really matter, to education? At least that's what came across in her reply to commenter Patrick: "...I don't think educators have really come to grips with the full implications of really thinking about education as human capital."
Doubtless, many educators want education to be about human capital as the primary value, not "stupid signals". So it can quite frustrating for them that not every student - no matter how dedicated or focused a learner - is going to be able to make that drive and initiative pay off, at least strictly in a monetary sense. Teachers have watched their students go out into the world with some trepidation for quite a while, in that the world does not look as certain for the required sacrifices as it once did. But, then, what is the alternative? Calls to do away with "excess" formal education, or perhaps give it all over to technology, miss the point. Perhaps a bit of these issues can be untangled in this post. First, there is uncertainty as to what human capital our institutions actually have room for in the present. Mmmm, doesn't exactly mean our human capital isn't needed. And yet in an institutional sense, at least, the signals we "put out" matter more than ever.
But it's more than just that. Clearly, the practicality we deem important matters for us even if it doesn't seem to matter elsewhere, something people were keenly aware of in the Great Depression. Typing skills, for instance, represent value in use for our abilities independent of anything else - which should always matter, right? However, the signals that matter to our institutions are more about conveying value in exchange. As far as practicality goes, many professionals were expected as a matter of course to do their own word processing, once personal computers were part of the workplace for about a decade or so. Their actual typing abilities (or lack thereof) were subsumed into other work activities in ways that words per minute were not readily apparent to the employer. Not true for the secretarial position, where words per minute really mattered and were thus a significant part of the value of exchange.
Why does any of that matter now? Signaling for the value in exchange (i.e. go for the best job possible which likely means don't indicate one's secretarial skills!) remains of course the bigger gamble and payoff, at least in the present. It's not unlike an unemployed individual who wonders if he should take that job flipping burgers while he's waiting for something a lot closer to the degree he just completed. And in the meantime those student loans need to be paid...
In the larger sense, value in use clearly matters, even if it is a gamble that the "step up" to the appropriate job might be jeopardized. We like to think that any employer is "understanding" in this regard, but if we are in fact passed by, it's probably not because we took the previous job that would pay the bills, but because the employer has too many resumes on his desk already.
Even though the "gotta pay those loans" job seems like a lousy signal, the main thing is we can be glad when such such jobs are still available, because they at least address the pressing obligations which anyone needing work must tend to, right now. Such lifesaver jobs for skills are today's equivalent for rough times in the past, when not being able to find work meant resorting to a sometimes hardscrabble survival mode of making a small piece of land eke out value when all else failed. Of course, the goal was to make that value in use also become value in exchange to the best degree possible.
Ultimately, we all need better approximations in life for value in use work, because it is what we resort to when all else fails. Not only do we need to make certain, as a society, that we truly account for value in use work, but also that we integrate it with the value in exchange work that so many aspire to. Signals matter more than ever in part because institutions simply don't need human capital now, as much as we do. That's the important part to remember, when we consider how to move beyond the limitations of our institutions for both the value in use work we need, and the value in exchange challenges which our institutions no longer have adequate room for.
Update: Nancy Folbre also weighs in on human capital here.
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