The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

by Kevin Simler

But if schools today mainly function as a credentialing apparatus, it seems like there should be cheaper, less wasteful ways to accomplish the same thing. For example, an enterprising young man could drop out of school and work an entry-level job for a few years, kind of like an apprenticeship. If he’s smart and diligent, he could conceivably get promoted to the same level he would have been hired at if he’d taken the time to finish his degree—and meanwhile, he’d be making a salary instead of studying and doing homework for free. So why don’t we see more young people doing this? A partial (but unsatisfying) answer is that going to school is simply the norm, and therefore anyone who deviates from it shows their unwillingness to conform to societal expectations. It’s all well and good for Bill Gates or Steve Jobs to drop out of college, but most of us aren’t that talented. And what employer wants to risk hiring someone who was too antsy to complete a degree? A desire to break the mold may be attractive in a CEO, but not necessarily for someone working at a bank or paper company. By this logic, school isn’t necessarily the best way to show off one’s work potential, but it’s the equilibrium our culture happened to converge on, so we’re mostly stuck with it.