The right lesson to draw is not that the signaling model is wrong, but that education signals more than intelligence. Most of the model’s friends learned this lesson long ago. Kenneth Arrow, as usual, knew it from the start. “Higher Education as a Filter” calls education a signal of ability, and explicitly states that ability depends on “socialization” as well as intelligence.30 Or as Peter Wiles succinctly said one year later, “What employers need is intelligent conformism, or great independence and originality within a narrow range.”31
