Increasingly, the marker of social status within the US less and less income, and more and more education. I saw a study showing it is the primary marker of class, over and above income or race or parent’s income (I really wish I could find this article). I know for sure it is more important than ever in elections. The example: who is higher status, an educated journalist living off of crumbs in the city, or a small town plumber? Of course the journalist has higher status, and while in the past they may have been somewhat upwardly mobile compared to their parents, nowadays it is unlikely that someone in that position ever makes more than their corporate white collar parents. Meanwhile tradies are raking it in.
This explains some things that would bother a logical person—why is education so expensive when it has a questionable monetary payoff? Answer: it is less an investment than a status symbol. You can look to international students coming to less rigorous American colleges, and the increasing leftward bent of higher education to see proof of this trend. Education as a primarily status game also explains why the quality has not increased, and why it seems immune to market forces. It also explains why people are willing to go into debt for it, when they could certainly learn very well online or a community college. It shows why the problem compounds—they ain’t makin’ any more status, and if anything, the competition is fiercer as society develops and simultanously ossifies—indeed, in Europe, status is much more closely linked to occupation than to material wealth. So you have a land grab in status.
Status is a zero-sum game, and one thing you likely instinctively know about zero-sum games is they get ugly pretty quick, as people are forced to battle over a fixed pie, rather than expanding it as we are able to do in the actually productive areas of the economy. There is a fixed pie in social status, as it is an entirely relative game (are you puffed up about the fact that you’re much more educated and enlightened on an absolute basis than your caveman ancestors? Me neither—we compare to our peers—relative). Thus, Harvard cannot meaningfully expand admissions—ideally we maximize the aggregate value of education on the societal level, but for the higher ups at a prestigous college, the incentives are much different. The game they are playing, and winning, is the game of prestige, of conferring status from one high status generation to the next. Any useful knowledge conferred is happy bonus.
One of the most interesting aspects of this to me is that the status has decoupled from the monetary rewards to education. There are still other rewards, people with higher education live longer and better, all else considered—although much of this could probably be attributed to social status. However, the general elite glut stings—whereas before a prestigious humanities degree may have at least lead to material consolation, it now fails miserably against a trade job when considering opportunity costs (If you are not convinced, think also of the years of life, foregone savings, work experience, and compound interest on investing the savings). I think this may help to explain the general rage of this class of people—think about young millenial or zoomer on a moral crusade—they signal their education and therefore status, demanding to be heard by the powers that be—whom they feel entitled to join. But, if we are now running out of good jobs for these people, we long ago ran out of meaningfully powerful positions—elite overproduction. Especially in an online society where the scalability of information leads to huge network effects—all strivers but a select few are doomed to frustration.
This does present some interesting opportunities for some to go against the grain. If you care little for status, or you could otherwise procure the accoutrements of high class, you can easily skip college and go for something with a more direct monetary payoff. If you care little for status, certainly avoid occupations such as journalism or social work—where most of the payoff comes in the form of prestige rather than pay. If there is a lesson here, be cognizant of all aspects of the pay of your career—from education, to damage to your body, to stability, to mental strain, to status, and so on, every career presents a different set of compensation. One can probably do themselves a huge favor if they go for a career that offers the right blend for them, and avoid those with payoffs to which they are not suited.
Higher education definitely seems to have gone a little off-the-rails, but competition for status usually does get pretty weird—
Quick admin: I’ve found I’m not as good at longform essays as I am just quickly writing up an interesting idea. So I’ll be doing more posts like this going forward, more frequently