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Hello everyone and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
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I'm here with Byron Auguste, who is president and co-founder of Opportunity at Work, a civic enterprise with which aims to improve the US labor market.
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He also served for 2 years in the White House as deputy assistant to the president for economic policy and deputy director of the National Economic Council.
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He worked at McKinsey & Company for many years and he was elected principal and also director.
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Prior to McKinsey, he was an economist at LMC International, Oxford University, and the African Development Bank.
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He is author of the 1995 book, The Economics of International Payments Unions and Clearing Houses.
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He has an undergraduate degree in economics from Yale and a DPhil in economics from Oxford University PhD as a Marshall Scholar. Welcome. Thank you, Tyler. Happy to be here.
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So, so much of your current work is about labor markets and training.
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How much does advancing information technology make training much harder?
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Are we even keeping pace with technological advance?
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Well, I don't think uh technology makes training harder.
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I mean, it should make it easier.
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I mean, there's so many more ways to deliver information, to engage with information, and uh it's funny cuz I a lot of times I hear people talk about oh, in a digital economy, things are going to be so much harder, but I actually think in many ways it's easier.
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I mean, think about what a um like a like someone who's uh uh a janitor even, or like can become sort of a building manager with digital technology.
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Working it on an iPad is easier than all the physical tools you need.
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So, I think it makes training easier.
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But if someone has to just teach me a new physical task, isn't that easier than me having to learn a new piece of software?
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Even when they change my Gmail, I get upset, right? It's disorienting.
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But it's it but but I don't see why that would be because a new piece of software is designed typically for people to use.
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Like, you know, if it's you know, it might be a little bit complicated, but if it's if it's Salesforce or what whatever kind of software you're using, it's designed for humans to use and it could be better for humans to use, but I I I I just think it's not No, I don't think there's a fundamental distinction between learning digital tools and learning physical tools.
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And learning digital tools, you can learn them um you're much more likely to be able to learn them anywhere.
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I mean, with physical tools, like let's say in in in in in textiles or or design things, you need to kind of be in a center where there's a lot of other artisans.
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And with digital tools, you know, you can be more of anywhere.
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But jobs where you have to learn a new digital tool, they'll typically require at least a 4-year college degree.
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So, if learning that stuff is so easy, why should the jobs require the college degree?
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Well, I think the word requires doing a lot of work there, um Tyler.
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I mean, uh 75 By that definition, 75% of admin assistant jobs require a bachelor's degree, even though 2/3 of admin assistants don't have a bachelor's degree.
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So, when you have you know, a couple million people doing a job without a degree and that job requires them doing a degree, maybe we should re-evaluate what requires means.
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It's I I don't talk about those jobs requiring a degree.
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I think companies often screen out people.
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They preemptively pre-screen people who don't have a degree, but that's not the same as saying it requires it.
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Sure, but there's a probability distribution.
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Wouldn't you agree that people with a college degree would be considerably more able to learn new pieces of software than people without, even though a few million of those without certainly have done it.
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So, I think what you're describing there is you're describing two distributions and you're saying that on average, the um you know, that someone with a bachelor's degree is more likely to have that skill set or learn it than someone without a bachelor's degree.
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But I heard average is over. Somebody said that.
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And so, if you look at the overlap of the distributions, you've got if you've got millions of people that you're excluding just because your arbitrary definition of them means that on average that's that's kind of dumb, isn't it?
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I mean it's it's like prejudice, right?
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It's prejudging somebody based on a statistical distribution even though like they quite likely could have those skills.
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But labor markets are in general based on statistical discrimination, right?
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So what's the metric we should use for deciding which measures a statistical discrimination or dumb and which are smart?
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Well, the labor markets look like statistical discrimination when you look at them at the market level, but at the level of the point of hiring the question is I you have to typically uh uh particularly when you're hiring on a digital platform where you might have hundreds of jobs, you know, hundreds of people apply for your jobs, you do have to shortlist people.
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So there is some form of screening based on some sort of signal that is required just from a transaction cost standpoint.
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Um but these days, why not?
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There's so many better ways to do it than a bachelor's degree.
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25 years ago when you needed to just have like a keyword search, fine, but now you could I mean you could post the training that you do for your own people once they have the job and see who could do the first three modules of the training and give them an interview.
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There's so many different ways, but the point is you should screen in based on skills, not screen out based on pedigree.
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That's the fundamental issue.
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How will we get or retrain more young men to be willing to train to be nurses or do elder care?
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Well, that's a great question cuz we need um a lot more um nursing, a lot more elder care.
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I would say in elder care, I think um paying people more would be a good start.
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I mean that typically pays very poorly.
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And uh so I think that should not be overlooked cuz you know, it's still a market. It's both ways.
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Um I think secondly though um there is a um having more um pathways and ways to, um kind of engage.
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I mean, most people move through the job market based on the skills they have, the experiences they have.
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And so, um, similar to if there's not a lot of men in the early stages of care work, it actually is harder for them to move in.
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Just like if there's not a lot of women in the early stages of construction work, it's harder for them to move in.
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Even though there should be a lot more women in construction and a lot more men in care.
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The quality of the police in America seems to be quite low in many jurisdictions. How do we fix that?
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How much of it is just paying them more? How much is training? How much is culture?
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Well, it's not an area where I'm an expert, but it does seem like a lot of it has to do with culture.
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Like, you know, organizational culture and, while I'm not an expert on police, I think I have had a lot of experience with the culture of different organizations and one thing that's so striking is how much cultures, organizational cultures tend to replicate themselves.
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How much you can come in with a very different kind of attitude and aspiration, and you know, you end up norming to the norms of the organization and I think that probably is applicable in police departments.
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At the margin, if you're trying to retrain someone, would you rather they had higher IQ or higher conscientiousness? Which is more scarce?
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Well, it it it depends in part on what you're training them for.
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Sure, but on average, people who are 25 and over I think IQ is overrated and conscientiousness is underrated for the most part, because you people can learn new things, but learning, as you know, requires, learning can be uncomfortable.
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It, first of all, it requires realizing you don't really know a thing, paying attention to where, oh, I know, I sort of know this, but looking at the finer points.
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So, yeah, I think conscientiousness probably matters more on the whole.
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If you think about the value of a typical four-year college degree, say from a large state university in the United States.
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How much of that value to you is learning and how much is signaling or something else?
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So, Bryan Caplan thinks it's about 80% signaling.
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I disagree with him, but that's a number, right?
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Cuz you think how much Well, how much do you think is signaling and how much do you think is uh learning?
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Are you saying the alternative is learning at college or are you saying something different?
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Uh it depends a great deal on the choice of major, but I think 60 to 80% of it is value of learning.
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definitely some signaling, there's some networking, there's some consumption thrown in there.
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Those would be my numbers. Yeah.
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Well, so uh I I thought about this a lot and you know, the the cuz the college wage premium has been pretty stable, right?
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People who have college degrees do make more than those without.
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Um but I think there's something else besides learning in college and the signaling, um which is uh if you if you look at how these these studies work, you're typically measuring an income gap, let's say 10 years later.
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And we've got it we've got it uh uh a a two-tiered labor market in this country.
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So, you started this question with like a typical uh bachelor's degree, but there's no typical bachelor's degree as you know, by topic, but also by school.
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I mean, a college degree isn't one thing, it's like 18,000 different things, you know.
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So, that that's the first point.
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And so, as we talked about before, there's a huge overlap in the distribution of actual skill, actual competency, IQ, everything you want, conscientiousness, all the rest of it.
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So, picture someone coming out of uh let's say flagship state university um versus somebody coming out with most community college degrees or who didn't finish college, but who has basically the same kind of characteristics, the first one, the one
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coming out of college, is likely going to go into um entry-level sales, entry-level management, entry-level technology, and from then on, their employers will invest in developing their human capital as part of their employers business model and competitive strategy. Whereas the second person same
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Whereas the second person same who starts with the same skill set, same attributes will probably be put into entry-level retail, warehouse, factory floor and for the most part they will be trained for safety compliance and efficiency and not for career development and so forth.
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So after 10 years of that, well then you're going to have a massive difference in wage outcomes that in in the particular scenario I'm talking about really don't have to do with what they learned and they have to do with the initial signaling but we got to recognize that the fact that people are placed in jobs and kept from moving into jobs that they have the skills for.
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We mostly learn on the job.
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That's where most of our human capital is developed.
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So I think we've got it backwards when we think about a skills gap being driven by education.
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The skills gap is a result of the opportunity gap that we've imposed not entirely but the implications for the college wage premium is that there's three things.
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There's signaling, there's learning in college but there's also what are you allowed to learn on the job as a result.
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Now you think conscientiousness conscientiousness is quite important. I agree with that.
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I also see in the literature from personality psychology that big five personality traits they don't change that much over time.
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So if you're conscientious when you're young, you're probably still pretty conscientious when you're old.
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So if we have in America we'll say 37% of people get four-year college degrees, the ones who don't on average are less conscientious.
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Why think that 10 years later given their lower conscientiousness they can be retrained when they either couldn't get through college, wouldn't finish, didn't even start, whatever the case may be.
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Well I think there's two problems with what you just said Tyler.
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One is you slipped in the on average whereas a person is not an average.
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A person is an individual.
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So no that which is a very big deal because like I don't know what the average level of conscientiousness is for college graduates or snot, but like, let's assume that it's that it might be higher on average.
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That absolutely doesn't mean there's Well, it what it means is there's tens millions of people who don't have college degrees who would rank very highly on conscientiousness.
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For example, if you started a college and you're first generation college student and then your mother who's the who's providing for, you know, your younger siblings get sick and you drop out of college to earn money to support your family, is are you less conscientious than the more affluent person who stayed in college? I don't think so.
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So, in other words, there's That's not why most people don't finish, right?
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Isn't whether or not you finished college the best test of conscientiousness we have? Absolutely not.
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What's the best way that we have then?
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I think if you're if you're an employer looking to hire someone, the best test of conscientiousness is how they do at the job they're in.
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Well, ex post, but ex ante.
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Well, ex It's tautologically the people who do well do well, right?
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But ex ante, what's the best measure of conscientiousness?
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So, if So, if college College right now is a signal of many things, but I think the statistics would say it's a huge signal of affluence and generational wealth.
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Like, being able to not only be prepared for the the test to go in to to selective college and being able to complete it, having the social capital, having the the positions If you're if if the position is that the people who complete college never make mistakes and therefore they're the most conscientious, well, I disagree.
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I think the people who complete college make lots of mistakes, but they tend to be the ones that have more cushion, more fallback, more shots on goal.
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And there are millions of people who, yeah, they aspire to go to college.
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I mean, when we talk about people who are skilled through alternative routes or or stars that don't have bachelor's degrees, about 40% of them actually do have college credits, they but they didn't finish for a lot of reasons.
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For example, they had to work and they had to to a lot, and if their work schedule doesn't correspond to their class schedule, then maybe they can't get the classes they need.
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And they they basically would have to go 6, 7 years. They run out of money.
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They might just plain run out of money.
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There's all sorts of family instability.
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So, in other words, I just don't agree with the the the view that says um that the reason most people don't who don't complete college don't complete it is because of some Animal House behavior. I disagree.
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It's mainly because of the the economic and social conditions and and what they have to do to to manage like a totality of life.
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And then finally, I'll say most people in college right now are not like a 19, 20-year-olds, right?
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Most people in college are actually working learners.
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That's typical college student today.
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So, they already come to this with children, with responsibilities.
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So, so I just think that our picture of what college is is very different than uh from 50 years ago.
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I mean, it should be different than 50 years ago. Hasn't caught up.
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You think it's a kind of market failure that the sheepskin effect is so pronounced in wages?
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The sheepskin effect meaning someone who quits just short of finishing earns much less than someone who finishes.
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I think it's an enormous market failure, yes.
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But why don't people then start companies, or for that matter nonprofits, and hire up all the people who almost finished because they would be way underpriced?
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But I don't I don't see anyone doing that.
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Yeah, there are plenty of them. that. Are you doing it?
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No, there are actually lots of people doing it.
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I mean, like it's it's a small scale because um obviously, it's it's easier uh and it's a quicker path to profits to market to employers people who they already think they want, right?
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So, to market based on pedigree and and so forth.
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And of course, employers want skills.
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And in places where skills are very easy to quantify, um you do get businesses um uh like like HackerRank, if you will, or there's there's a there's a bunch of businesses in tech, for example, that are really about assessing people's skills.
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That's definitely happening for for software developers.
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for software developers. And then there are also businesses exactly like the ones um you're talking about that actually hire they train and hire people and they actually provide outsourced services to companies because those
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companies wouldn't hire those individuals because they don't have degrees but those individuals are great problem solvers they're they're great and again technology is the area where you see it the most but that is happening actually that's an arbitrage opportunity for sure. Now you've spoken in Singapore. What
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Now you've spoken in Singapore.
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What does Singapore need to do to support more creative talent?
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Well I think you know Singapore has gotten a lot of things right in in education and I and I think one thing that the that they they they recognize is that there there has been a bit of a conformity and so I think one of the best things you can do is to widen the aperture in which you think of as
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talent and to recognize that sort of hybrid skills are so valuable so I think a lot of people and not just in Singapore but in this country it will tell their kids what you should do you know engineering and math and there's a lot to be said for that but you know software development plus art you know
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software development plus music software you know there's there's really incredible value to having if you will orthogonal sort of skill sets hybrid skill sets because then you notice things other people don't and I think so much of creativity comes at the margin you know between disciplines I also think we'd get a lot more
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creativity if you had kind of more diversity of talent and in the Singapore context that is one meaning and in our context that is a that is a different meaning but really two different life experiences combined with the the rigors of like learning something well right? But there's plenty of ethnic diversity
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But there's plenty of ethnic diversity there right?
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And they and they make a point of mixing people in terms of neighborhoods.
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A lot of Singaporeans will say to me well we've chosen high conscientiousness and in doing so sacrificed creativity.
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They may word it slightly differently, but what do you think of that Singaporean fear?
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Well that mean conscientiousness is then overrated, not underrated?
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Well, I'm smiling well, it's I don't think you look at Singapore and say if if Singapore maxes on conscientiousness and it went from you know, being an extremely poor country in the 1950s, an extremely vulnerable country to one of the richest in the world.
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I don't think that speaks poorly for conscientiousness.
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I'm smiling though because when I um you're you're you're alluding to I spoke at Singapore at their uh their Jubilee, the 50th anniversary um and they invited me out there to speak about um uh kind of economics and technology and I I I looked up the Gallup um you know, the Gallup ratings on um engagement at work.
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And uh you know, these international ratings and uh there's a set there's a set of people who are so unhappy at work that they want to sabotage things and there's a set of people who are so engaged at work that they're excited and there's a set of people in the middle.
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Um Singapore has like the highest percentage of people in the middle.
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They're neither sort of lit up nor are they disgruntled and I I mentioned that to the crowd and there was a a lot of knowing laughter.
18:24
What is your very current opinion of the German model for vocational training?
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I've been hearing for at least 20 years we all need to do it but I look at the quality of other parts of German education, K through 12 we would call, seems to be fraying.
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Quality of German infrastructure poor, a lot of bad German decision-making, energy policy, other areas.
18:42
Are they still actually on the frontier of vocational training or is that something we should have been recommending 20 years ago?
18:50
So, um I've I've I've spent some time um in in in Europe on this question.
18:54
Look, I think with the German system and and a lot of the northern European, Swiss is similar to this.
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They are very, very good at pathways of education to employment.
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So, in other words, to have multiple pathways, you're you're in in school like upper secondary, you you you have pretty clear choices as to pathways and you don't have to have what the equivalent of what we would think of as a as a as a as a bachelor's degree, but you can have very rigorous technical education and a pathway into well-paid jobs.
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Now, that I think it's really important uh so this the so that I think that's a positive and remains a positive.
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I think it's really important to recognize though when we talk about oh adopting the German like German system, people here tend to say oh German companies do apprenticeships, so US companies should do apprenticeships.
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But it's not just the German companies do apprenticeships.
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German companies plug into an apprenticeship system and they play their part in it.
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Upper secondary education, uh labor councils, industry councils, these kind of collective um entities do the heavy lifting and they plug into So I don't think it's that applicable here and in particular, I don't think, you know, the Hanseatic League and the hundreds of years of of sort of history that went into the development of that system, you can't just like replicate that here.
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I think a US system would look different.
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The I think the weakness of the German system and partly why you're seeing this more and more, Tyler, is they they actually don't use this kind of system for let's say you're in your 30s and there's been a change in industrial structure and you need to retool.
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They don't use the apprenticeship system for that.
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When I was I just a couple years before COVID, I was over the OECD and the EU had a session on the future of adult education as part of their apprenticeship week and adult education in the sense of um those already in the workplace is not as strong as the apprenticeship system and I think the dynamism of the economy means that, you know, just an education-to-employment model is not going to be enough.
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And so I would like to see an American system uh leapfrog the German system, be much more data-driven, be much more inclusive, not just about education-to-employment, but about everyone in their pathways through the job.
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And we can see the data in the data that such a system is possible.
21:09
What's the best US movie or TV show about finding the perfect job?
21:16
About finding the perfect job? Or a very good job. Is it Moby Dick?
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And you did you think that was a very good job?
21:26
Well, maybe for the time, but uh my my follow-up question, which I'll toss out now as well, is do you view popular culture as your ally or enemy in what you're trying to do?
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Well, it right now I would say it's not mainly the the ally, but I but back to your question about American novel, I would go for Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
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He became like a court wizard um based on um his uh uh uh practical Yankee understanding of things like the almanac and the the pattern of solar eclipses.
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So, that's a good example of practical knowledge leading to a pretty great job.
21:57
I mean, you know, in those days in King Arthur's Court, court court magician was, you know, right up there. And television today?
22:06
I think television uh Well, I don't know how much television really has to say about getting a great job.
22:14
I think one of the worst and least realistic depictions and one of the most influential was this uh show called Celebrity Apprentice, you may have heard of, which is which is not I mean, which was, you know, kind of fantasy and not the way it works.
22:27
Um so, I don't think uh on the whole uh television's been all that helpful.
22:32
I think I think though if anything, I would less television and more kind of elite uh narratives, if you will, um are I think really over-index on on college.
22:46
And I it's not that that's bad advice to go to college cuz I think I'm yeah, I'm very I think our our our university system is in many ways just an incredible asset.
22:55
I think it's a wonderful thing, but the idea that the only path to success is is through college and then becomes self-reinforcing.
23:06
It seems to me there's good causal evidence that if you finish four-year college, you will end up healthier for the rest of your life.
23:13
Do the alternatives to college give you that same benefit?
23:17
Well, so when you when we talk about whenever we talk about the statistics of college, I think and even setting aside causality, right?
23:26
Right, but clearly there's a selection effect, right? But even causality.
23:30
Set even setting aside those those those measurement issues, I think it's very different to say how does it make sense to act in the system as it exists today and how should the system be?
23:41
Right, that's different because for an individual person, they can't change the system. So, yes, absolutely.
23:47
I think there's a lot of benefits to graduating from college and if you are in a position to graduate from college from a you know, from a sort of a quality college, you definitely should try to do that.
24:00
Like maybe you should do that first because then society as it exists will both allow you to be a plumber and allow you to do other things if you decide you want to do other things later.
24:11
But that's different than saying that we should organize a system in which something that costs tens of thousands of dollars and many years of your life is a prerequisite to having a decent job and a decent living.
24:22
I think that's a terrible way to organize a society, which is different than saying given how we've organized the society, what should an individual choose?
24:32
What has gone wrong with American men? How long have you got?
24:36
I mean, it seems like it's quite a lot.
24:38
What's your most basic explanation?
24:38
Like life expectancy between American men and you can just do white American men if you want.
24:46
White American men, white Australian men, it's a huge gap pre-COVID.
24:48
Social indicators for a significant chunk of American men, you can divide it up different ways, but then way down. What What happened?
24:56
What's your simplest theory? Well, I don't know.
24:59
It's It's very It is It is very striking cuz I I think as far as I know, there's only two places in the world where such a large part of the population is seeing reduced um life expectancy. Well, with COVID now.
25:14
Putting Putting aside COVID, all this is still happening, right?
25:16
but I'm saying pre-COVID, yeah.
25:16
It's sort of I mean, in in Russia is one place, right?
25:20
Where it's sort of deaths of despair sort of uh drinking like and then and then in in much of of the United States um and uh look, I think the math says uh that if you were to anchor it in life expectancy, the issue is deaths of despair, right? It's It's suicide.
25:39
It's um and like I But why is despair up here, right?
25:42
It's not the worst country in the world.
25:45
It's not, and I think it's but I you know, I I I think there's a lot of evidence that it's um how you thought your life would be relative to what it is.
25:54
I mean, I I think if you look at the over time, you know, the if if if this American dream anchor point is sort of a life that's where your kids live better than you and you live better than your parents, uh that's something that certainly for white Americans, you know, north of 90% were experiencing, you know, if you were born in say 1940 and now it's a coin flip, right?
26:15
It's as if as if if you were born in 1980, it's what was like 50 you know, you know, you're age 30.
26:22
It It looks like about half of Americans were living better than their parents and about half were living worse, and presumably when we see the 2020 data, uh it will have gone under water.
26:30
So, we're the first generation in which uh Americans and certainly white Americans are living worse in material terms and in terms of what they that their life possibilities.
26:40
Um where more than half are living worse than their parents.
26:44
I think that is a profound shock.
26:45
And you know, I think that on top of it, given so much of it is economics and gender expectations being what they are that probably does hit men harder.
26:56
So you think we should try to lower our expectations for significant portions of American society or raise them?
27:03
Well, we could do better.
27:03
Like we we could we could lower your expectations, but you could also do better in your outcomes which it would include So look, the it's constant the kinds of uh issues we're talking about are disproportionately concentrated um in uh in in white men without bachelor's degrees.
27:27
And I think if you look at what was possible for white men without bachelor's degrees if they work hard, were conscientious, they could make a lot of progress in their lives before.
27:37
And more and more of those pathways where if you you didn't have a college degree, but you kind of like, you know, you kept your nose clean and you worked hard.
27:47
I mean again, for white men that usually worked out.
27:48
And I think now it often doesn't and a big part of it is this this uh just insane levels of pedigree bias where we attribute so much value to having a bachelor's degree as opposed to actually doing the job.
28:04
And that doesn't just affect white men.
28:07
I mean it affects like many, but I do think that that shift in reality and that relative to expectations has been a significant part of it.
28:18
So there's there's two versions of your hypothesis that I can see.
28:20
One is that it would be socially better to value the college degree less for reasons you just stated amongst others.
28:29
The other is that even at the margin, even privately we're way overvaluing the college degree.
28:34
Oh, privately we're So If it's the latter, you should be extremely optimistic, right?
28:39
Well, yeah, it it it is it is both, but it's definitely the latter.
28:41
So in other words, we because you say privately we're overvaluing the college degree.
28:47
Again, if you unpack that at the level of um a a hiring transaction, absolutely for most in most cases employers overvalue a college degree.
28:57
That So, just a but to you got to thin slice it.
29:00
I'm not saying that doctors shouldn't have medical degrees, right?
29:04
Or perhaps even that um uh you know, you need a civil engineering degree to be building a bridge.
29:08
But we are requiring bachelor's degrees for jobs in sales, in general management, in um you know, in like IT operations where you can easily see whether someone has the skills or not and you're and like you know, millions of employers for millions of jobs, you're adding these degree requirements.
29:27
And so, I'm saying something yes, at the at the individual level I think we're overvaluing degrees and we're undervaluing the skills of people who are skilled through alternative routes of stars.
29:36
But at a system level, it's incredibly destructive math.
29:41
So, if 70% of new jobs in the 10 years to COVID were ones that employers said, "Oh, you need a bachelor's degree."
29:47
But only 40% of American workers have a bachelor's degree, well then obviously that math doesn't work.
29:54
And so, it's absolutely self-harm at a at a system level.
29:57
So, it it is a it is a it is market problem, but it's a collective action problem, too.
30:04
The collective action problem version of your hypothesis seems much more plausible to me.
30:08
So, as you know, putting aside pandemic times, employers are demanding not only more four-year degrees, but master's degrees are more for a lot of jobs.
30:16
So, the market has decided in a big way to move in the other direction.
30:21
So, the level of market failure Sorry, have you have you interviewed the market?
30:25
Like how's the market decided that?
30:27
I I think you're like the institutional factors are really really important to understand.
30:31
So, it's not the because the this is not the US labor market is not a spot market for ditch digging, right?
30:39
It's not a market in that sense.
30:41
It is a It is where years, decades of investment in human capital, if you will, are monetized, right?
30:48
And it's a market where um the And And like healthcare, it's a market where kind of the ultimate use is not necessarily um by the person hiring or training.
30:58
And even more so, it's a market where self-concept plays a big role.
31:02
So, for example, um in um in the uh HR kind of field, that was a field 30 years ago where um if you were um good, conscientious, people person manager, someone might say, "Hey, you should look into a stint in HR."
31:19
And like the HR department had people who had worked in in operations, on the factory floor, like in finance, like just all over.
31:27
It was a very diverse group.
31:29
And now uh it's a field that it over the last 30 years has become the most credentialized.
31:33
And so And so now they're And now that's the front end, right? Of screening.
31:39
So, "Hey, we're hiring for an important job.
31:41
Well, my job's an important important and I had to have a I had to have a bachelor's degree for it.
31:46
So, probably this has to have a bachelor's degree."
31:48
There's a tremendous amount of cut and pasting going on and just without thinking about what the role requires.
31:54
So, I think you can't ignore this kind of history as a fact, if you will, right?
31:58
This There's There's a path dependency here that's taken us far off course.
32:02
And it's not just about some sort of um you know, kind of like straight free market decisions.
32:08
But we have such a diversified economy, right?
32:10
So many millions of employers.
32:12
They're willing to do do do a lot of weird things.
32:13
You see that in the tech sector.
32:15
And to think this problem they can overcome cuz they're just massively failing at the level of millions of individual decisions.
32:22
to be clear, um I I think it can be overcome.
32:24
I mean, I'm working full-time to overcome it.
32:26
So, like I So, to your point, I I'm very optimistic about solving the problem and for three main reasons.
32:33
The biggest reason isn't even the one you're talking about.
32:35
The biggest reason I'm optimistic about solving it is that you've got 70 million stars, half the workforce, who are busting their tails like figure to learn new things, to to actually uh figure out what it would take to have the skills for the job.
32:49
I don't know if you saw this, there was a Harvard Business um review, the big survey, Harvard Business Business School survey and Accenture, I think, um that actually looked at attitudes about uh digital transformation.
33:01
And senior executives said that one of the biggest barriers to digital transformation is that their frontline workers did not want to learn new skills.
33:09
But they also surveyed frontline workers who off the charts wanted to learn new skills for digital transformation and saw as the problem that they weren't being given any guidance on what skills to to learn.
33:18
And I think you see that that's absolutely true of college.
33:22
Think about the information problem facing someone working in a frontline job, say making $15 an hour, who wants to do better, wants to earn more, wants to be able to support their family more.
33:31
Um they half the people will say, "Oh, you need to go to school."
33:37
So, you need to go 4 years, 5 years, 6 years, and then see what happens.
33:39
And the other half of the people are like, "Oh, you should apply for a job."
33:42
If you say to go to school, well, where do I get the money?
33:46
And by the way, even if I can get scholarships or student loans or whatever, like who supports my kids, who pays the rent?
33:52
Okay, that's one problem.
33:53
And then it's going to be years before you know.
33:55
But then if you apply for a job, right?
33:58
You're not going to know much that much more either.
34:00
You might not get the job.
34:02
But then the question is, why didn't you get the job?
34:03
You don't get feedback from the interview, you don't know if you've been screened out.
34:06
Like we've worked with people who said, "You can't get me a job at this company.
34:10
I've applied four times, they rejected me." But guess what?
34:14
They hadn't rejected them, they had screened them out, they had not evaluated their skills and found them wanting.
34:19
They had screened them out without considering them.
34:20
And since we partnered with this company to say, "Hey, like on in our system, you just do it based on skills and attributes, you don't screen people out."
34:29
They actually got the job.
34:30
And so, there is a market failure in the actual like workflow of hiring that is massive. And I agree with you.
34:40
We should be very optimistic about being over to overcome that.
34:41
And I can tell you lots of employers have been moving in that direction for the last 5 10 years because they see the old direction's not working for them.
34:52
If it's privately profitable to deviate from this practice, why not run a for-profit rather than a nonprofit?
34:58
Well, there are for-profits that are taking pieces of this.
35:00
And I And I think it's great.
35:01
And I I think if I were doing this as a for-profit, I would uh I would be sort of skimming, right?
35:06
I would be taking the the kind of the the folks who are absolutely overwhelmingly kind of should have the job today.
35:15
It's just like not even a close call.
35:16
And, you know, creating some sort of arbitrage there.
35:20
But, I think there's a much larger opportunity.
35:21
And um um I I think no one entity, no one person, no one organization, not even one sector can solve this problem alone.
35:30
I really I really think it's a multi-sector problem.
35:32
So, the question isn't uh how can a nonprofit solve it cuz a nonprofit can't solve it.
35:37
The question is what's missing?
35:39
And fundamentally, I believe an Opportunity at Work believes what's missing is an actual set of valid signals that so you screen-in signals as opposed to screen-out signals.
35:49
You cannot interview everybody.
35:53
But, if the only if you're screening out because on average you think people with bachelor's degree or better, so therefore you're screening out millions of people who can do the job, well, that's a terrible system.
36:01
And an individual employer, it might not They They can't necessarily change that whole system because the system works through hiring platforms and lots of other things.
36:12
And the employers that have the biggest ability to change it don't need to change it as much because they're winning the poaching wars, right?
36:20
It's the companies that are losing the poaching wars that are actually really sucking wind on talent.
36:24
And and have the power to change the system, but they can change their practices and we're working to help them.
36:30
As you know, more and more top universities are moving away from requiring standardized testing for people applying.
36:36
Is this good or bad from your point of view?
36:41
Well, I think it's really too early to tell because the question is But you want alternative markers not just what kind of family you came from, what kind of crap you had.
36:48
So if you're just smart, why why shouldn't we let you standardize test?
36:53
Yeah, I think alternative markers are are key.
36:55
I like I I think it depends I this is actually pretty complicated issue and I've talked to um university administrators and admissions people and it's it's interesting that the variety of of different ways they're they're trying to work on this.
37:09
But I I will say I will say this.
37:13
If you think about something like the SAT when it first started like I'm I'm talking about in the in the 1930s essentially, it was an alternative route into a college because the way like and it was because it was started with the Ivy's, right?
37:30
It was started with James Conant and Harvard and you know, the Ivy's and the Seven Sisters and the rest and then it gradually sort of moved out.
37:37
But the problem they were trying to solve back in the 30s was that up until that point the way you got into say Dartmouth is you know, the the headmaster of Choate would write to the to Dartmouth and say here was our you know, our 15 like candidates for Dartmouth and you know, Dartmouth would mostly take them because Choate knew what Dartmouth wanted.
37:56
But then you had the high school movement in the US where between 1909 you went from 9% of American teenagers going to high school to 79% going to high school.
38:04
So now suddenly you had like high school students applying to college, you know, they were at Dubuque Normal School in Iowa.
38:13
Like how does Dartmouth know whether this person was So it wasn't So the the people from Choate didn't start I'm the SATs, but the SAT, even though it was a pretty terrible test at the time, it was better than nothing.
38:26
It was a way that someone who was out there not in the normal feeder schools could distinguish themselves.
38:33
And I think it is a very valuable that is a very valuable role to play.
38:37
And as you know, Tyler, the SAT does to some extent still play that role, but it also because now that everybody you know, has had to use it, it also is something that can be, you know, gamed more and you know, test prep and all the rest of it.
38:51
So, But it tracks IQ pretty closely and a lot of Asian schools way over emphasize standard testing, I would say.
38:58
And they've risen to very high levels of quality very quickly.
39:00
It just seems like a good way to do it.
39:03
just I I think there's a much bigger problem.
39:04
I mean, to me, um the bigger problem is this.
39:07
There is a greater demand for higher education and and and rightly so.
39:12
Um but if you look at the number of quality seats in higher education in this country, they have grown very little in a period where we've gone from almost no one had a college degree.
39:22
By the way, high schools were to get the jobs of the future, right?
39:25
High schools were not meant as a were not developed as a way to get into college.
39:29
High schools were developed as a way to get into a good job, right?
39:32
Jobs of the future at the time.
39:32
And so, now that in 1983 with the nation at risk, we suddenly decided that, "Oh, the point of high schools for everyone to go to college."
39:40
Like no one had told high schools up until that point.
39:42
And so, so now that that's the case, um you basically basic problem is if you keep the number of college seats constant and you demand that everybody try to go to college and in fact, if businesses to some extent weaponize college degrees by saying like, "Oh, if you don't have a college degree, you can't get into a decent job."
40:04
Well, then suddenly you've got huge demand for college degrees and you've got basically mostly fixed supply, right?
40:11
And so, what happens as an economist?
40:14
Well, what happens is you create this like horrible zero-sum bottleneck in the talent development system and in the signaling system.
40:21
So, yeah, you can debate what should be the signals that allow people to go to college, but the fact of the matter is, we should have we should have like 50% more, maybe twice as many high-quality seats in college. That's the problem.
40:34
So, affirmative action and and you know, and testing and issues like this become life or death issues because we put way too much weight on that bottleneck.
40:42
What we really need is more quality college seats, and we need many more valid alternative routes, and that should be not just for people who are, you know, 18, 19, 20, but people in their 20s, people in their 30s, people in their 40s, people in their 50s because jobs are changing all the time, and we need all the talents.
41:00
It is absolutely not the case that people stop learning.
41:04
So, that's that's what we need.
41:06
So, I I think a lot of this is a second-order distraction because what we actually need is more of the good thing, not just different ways of screening people out.
41:17
But if you're agnostic on standardized testing, what is it you think we should be measuring more as an admissions input?
41:24
Um I I um what I'm saying about testing is that um It doesn't have to be a test.
41:31
It could be any kind of measurement.
41:32
There must be something we should measure more.
41:33
And what what is that something?
41:36
I I think there's it's more of a signal pluralism that I'm arguing for.
41:38
In other words, I don't believe uh there's so many talents.
41:42
There's there's and there's so many different needs and skills.
41:46
So, the idea that we should all norm on a single way to evaluate talent at every level it it is No, we can measure a bunch of things more, right?
41:56
You don't simply want more discretion for admissions officers, right?
42:00
Yeah, but for example, I think but I think there should be for example, explicitly um uh you should be able to First of all, the the college and vocational uh should not be nearly as separate as they are.
42:14
We should think about vocational as applied learning and there should be way more of it in college.
42:19
I think, you know, uh Northeastern University for example has done a very good job of that.
42:21
Um and I I think and I think college should also be much more seen as skills acquisition along the way.
42:28
You think of a Western Governors University which is an example of filling a market it's a nonprofit but it's been, you know, it's been growing by I think 10 15% a year since it was founded and it's competency-based education where every level of learning um can be validated.
42:43
So in in principle um you you know, the the bachelor's degree is the ribbon and bow at the end of the process.
42:51
Genomics doesn't seem to work yet practically but should we use it when it does?
42:54
Wouldn't it be a good way to identify people who couldn't go to college but are very talented?
43:02
Um uh I think there's lots easier ways than genomics like a lot more direct ways to recognize people.
43:09
But again ex post you see who's done well but ex ante what's better? When it works.
43:13
Yeah, but think about the data we have right now.
43:14
So opportunity at work um when we say like one of the as we got started cuz we're trying to create a market change, right?
43:22
So we're thinking about um talent category creation, right?
43:24
Are people who are skilled through alternative routes 70 million people stars.
43:27
And the fact is um you can see what skills people have most easily by what jobs they do today. Right?
43:37
And and and the one of the things that's really powerful is that there's a huge overlap in the skill set required for many low-wage jobs and those for many middle-wage jobs, right?
43:50
So like a second-level call center representative has a lot of the skills required for enterprise sales for example but enterprise sales might pay twice as much money.
43:59
So if you think about um uh formal education or training as more like topping up the skills you learn on the job, you have a much more efficient path to source people by the millions like into jobs you want.
44:12
So, that's like a much more direct path.
44:16
And there's about 50 gateway jobs that that are lower wage jobs where the skills required for them basically match the skills for middle wage jobs.
44:25
So, of the 70 million stars, 30 million of them have skills for a job that pays 50% more than the jobs they're in today.
44:32
And you'll say, well, why doesn't the market allow them to move into these jobs?
44:35
And the answer is it partly does.
44:36
Like, that is we have a database of 130 million job transitions, and that's exactly how stars, and for that matter, people with bachelor's degrees tend to move into higher wage jobs.
44:46
They move into higher wage jobs with an overlapping, highly overlapping skill set to the jobs they're in.
44:51
So, like we see like a much more direct impact than genomics or teaching third graders to code or any number of things you might also think might matter.
45:01
A much more direct effect is instead of these um movements happening at random, why don't we put some streetlights around them?
45:07
Why don't we put some, you know, like some traffic it's so and actually treat these accidental pathways up through the labor market as intentional ones.
45:15
And I think that can be the basis of a an American system, if you will, that's much more related to data, much more driven by work as opposed to just waiting on it.
45:24
And I think that would be a far superior, or rather, not as a replacement for higher education because again, pluralism matters.
45:30
It's creating a wide variety of ways that people can succeed.
45:35
Let's say we had an AI system that predicted labor outcomes pretty well, and maybe it wasn't transparent.
45:39
We didn't even understand how it worked, right?
45:42
That's quite possible with algorithms.
45:44
Should we use that a lot, or is that a problem or an issue?
45:48
Well, as you described it, I think that's a terrible idea.
45:49
And here's why, because if you have an AI that can predict outcomes, and as you mentioned, we don't understand it, the way an AI is almost certainly predicting those outcomes is not by some inherent characteristics, it's by machine learning.
46:02
So, in other words, it's looking at like the actual outcomes and saying what's the pattern that generates these outcomes.
46:07
Well, if the actual outcomes today are generated by all sorts of bias and most obviously, for the purposes of this conversation, um uh this degree bias, right?
46:17
Well, then the AI will say, "Oh, well, you're not going to probably be able to get that job because all our data says you won't."
46:28
But why is it It's It's not It's not because of some intrinsic reason, it's because we have a system that's biased against you.
46:35
And the same can be true if you look at the levels of occupational segregation in this country, um by gender certainly, but by race also, um uh for you to believe that that's like a an actually optimal situation, I mean, you'd have to have a pretty low opinion of, let's say, black people, right?
46:52
Because like um there's a But why would I think an AI program is going to hurt black people?
46:57
I mean, isn't in the sense that we created the program?
47:01
the AI program is going to hurt black people.
47:02
I'm saying, and I'm not saying it's it's going to the AI program is going to hurt.
47:05
I'm saying that the current systems, right?
47:07
And let's sort of if we were to keep it on uh stars versus people with bachelor's degrees.
47:14
People who have the skills to do the job, but can't get the job, and there's millions of such people, they're being screened out not by AI, they're being screened out by a set of human systems, by the way, mostly designed by accident, inadvertently, with respect to their talents, for the most part.
47:30
And so, that is what's doing it.
47:32
What AI is doing, a machine learning AI, is turbocharging the failures of the human system.
47:39
I'm not blaming the AI, to be very clear.
47:41
I think AI could be very helpful, extremely helpful.
47:43
I think like to apply machine learning to human learning, for example, I think that could be very powerful.
47:48
I could see in the future you could have a business model that had an AI patch, like you have 85% of the skills for the job, the AI can do the other help you do the other 15% can sort of teach you as you go, can validate when you have the skills, it could be metered, and then it goes away and you have all the skills.
48:05
So, AI can be incredibly helpful, but it's got to be trying to solve the right problem.
48:09
I mean, this is the biggest thing about AI.
48:12
What is the problem you're trying to solve?
48:15
And secondarily, what are the constraints you're imposing?
48:16
Because an AI will then go to town, but if you're trying to solve the wrong problem with an AI, it's a disaster.
48:20
So, I'm not blaming the AI, that's the wrong problem statement.
48:24
Our right problem statement is how do you have people who have tremendous amount of skills, but not all of them?
48:30
And we're not quite sure.
48:30
If you set AI to solve that problem, well, I think AI could be very powerful.
48:35
But isn't there attention in what you're saying?
48:37
So, you're trying to tell all these employers, if you do what I'm recommending, it will be good for your private profits.
48:43
And then you're turning around and telling them, well, any algorithm you use that will predict actual outcomes is bad.
48:49
That's what you shouldn't do.
48:49
Isn't that a very uphill climb?
48:52
I'm not saying that any outcomes you you're I'm saying that if you predict whether some if I'm saying garbage in, garbage out is what I'm saying.
48:58
I'm saying if your process is biased, and then you use AI to predict bias is a tough bias?
49:03
If you have an AI program that does predict who will do well on the job, employers will want to use it. how?
49:11
Generate profits for the company.
49:13
I and and you think that the companies in their own internal systems that the AI could have sufficiently good attribution of who develops profits for the company?
49:20
I think look, if you're talking about like sales, for example, like maybe, but most jobs are collaborative jobs where the work product is team product.
49:28
I think um I mean, the probably Google um has the most I mean, I think not probably, definitely has the most sophisticated people analytics um team in the world, and one of the things they've concluded a couple of things.
49:41
One, they've concluded that when you have all the data, um a bachelor's degree has um like zero additional explanatory power, right?
49:51
So, that's one thing when you apply the most of it.
49:52
And the second thing is the best teams are not just aggregations of the quote-unquote best individuals in the role.
49:59
The best teams have dynamics of their own that include some that are more team players, some that are more like you know, so I just think it's just it's not that applying AI is has to be problematic.
50:11
It's that applying AI to a problem that's poorly understood and poorly specified is not going to work.
50:19
As you know, the state of Maryland now no longer requires a bachelor's degree for a large number of government jobs.
50:25
It's early on in this, but how do you think that's going so far? What is going well? What is not going well?
50:30
Well, as you may know, Opportunity at Work a partner with the state of Maryland to do this and and we actually in sort of showed them showed Governor Hogan and his team the data on you know, there's 1.
50:41
3 million stars in Maryland half of whom have the skills for jobs that pay more and they cut across all races and all regions.
50:50
It's particularly powerful for veterans, for people in rural areas of Maryland, disproportionately African-Americans also Latinos.
50:59
So, it's a very power and the state of Maryland had a lot of jobs it couldn't fill.
51:03
And so, so what it actually did is combination of removing degree requirements for some jobs where they clearly didn't belong.
51:13
And in other cases it had to do with jobs that there weren't really formal degree requirements, but there also wasn't outreach to stars.
51:18
So, I think a big thing that Maryland and Governor Hogan did and you know, he and I were there announcing this this together, but he really sort of focused on we see your talent. We see your skills. We want it.
51:34
Like we you know, we and they we actually uh we want your help solving the problems for the state of Maryland. That's really important.
51:44
I I hear I get kind of annoyed when I hear people that oh, are we going to give someone a job?
51:48
A job is not a gift, right?
51:50
Work is solving problems and stars are problem solvers.
51:55
We have a lot of unsolved problems and when you have people who can help you solve the problems and you're keeping them out, that's ridiculous.
51:59
And so Maryland also posted hundreds of these jobs on Stellar Works, which is Opportunity Works kind of Stars talent marketplace and look, it's getting the pipeline going because, you know, they've had lots of applications.
52:13
You have you know, we offer some additional ways to kind of screen people in.
52:21
Again, at the end of the day, it's it's those who hire in Maryland there's a very formal process.
52:25
But what one thing that's been really gratifying is that many other states have reached out and many other county governments have reached out, but also lots of employers.
52:35
Many employers that we worked with already have seen the the Maryland example as being very validating for their work.
52:42
Now you argued before and I fully agree that top schools, indeed non-top schools, should let in many more candidates, right?
52:48
Given that they don't do this and this argument is at this point not new, I mean, how much should we actually trust these institutions of higher education? Should we respect them? Should we honor them?
53:00
Should we think they're well-intentioned but somehow just not understanding the argument or should we think they're actually just self-interested and elitist and anti-egalitarian?
53:07
Like what's what's our proper mental stance here?
53:11
Well, you know, I I think um the argument that institutions are self-interested is not as much of an insult as some people give it credit.
53:18
I mean, you I'm willing to take the fully cynical view of this.
53:23
I'm saying but I'm saying as economist like the idea that that if you put a set of incentives in front of an institution over time that they will respond to those incentives, that's like pretty normal.
53:33
So let's review the incentives for higher education, right?
53:37
So we we create this system where um businesses decide that the way to decide whether they would even bother to spend the time to figure out whether somebody could get a decent job and lead a different decent life as a result because that's how you would lead it in America, you work, right?
53:55
And you sort of you advance.
53:55
So, if they say, "Well, you know, this thing that was never invented for that, this college degree and ideally a selective college degree, that's what we're going to base it on." So, that's the thing.
54:06
So, it sends this incredible magnetic signal that everybody's got to charge towards that.
54:10
And then we say, "All right, so that sets off the competition in higher ed.
54:13
So, how do we judge whether you're doing well in higher ed?"
54:16
I'll tell you what, how about this, the more people you can exclude, the better you're doing.
54:19
So, we're saying like everybody needs a college degree and then we're saying that you get to the top of the rankings in US News & World Report by excluding as many people as you can, right?
54:28
So, that is a terrible incentive structure.
54:32
So, surprise, colleges are trying to right, they're trying to like rise up the rankings, they're trying to be better, better reviewed.
54:39
And and so, you get what you ask for.
54:41
That's the thing what's mystifying to me, Tyler, is how what's how surprised businesses are when they say, "Oh, colleges aren't giving us the what we the skills we want."
54:52
It's like, "Well, they're giving you what you asked for, which is people with bachelor's degrees, right?"
54:54
And then we're surprised when we say, "Oh, the best college is the one that keeps the most out."
55:00
And then we're saying, "Well, why don't colleges let more people in?" Right?
55:02
So, the problem starts with this combination of an elitist attitude it like it says like, "Oh, how do you know something's good?
55:10
It's that you you know, not many people can do it." No, that's wrong.
55:12
I think colleges should be judged by the who how many people they successfully include and how much progress they help them make and and not just in terms of um their potential earnings, although that's obviously important, but you know, their uh what they learn.
55:26
They might learn that they want to do something completely different.
55:30
So, I think colleges should be judged by that and right now we're judging colleges in the almost the worst possible way.
55:35
So, it shouldn't be surprising that many colleges feel the pressure to try to be elite, to see how many people they can get to apply, how many people they can reject, and not to add seats because then it would be harder to do that.
55:49
So, I think we need to change the incentive structure for universities, but that's a very different thing than saying we should disrespect college education or university education.
55:56
I think it's obviously incredibly important and valuable for the country.
55:59
We need more of it for more people.
56:02
But to change the incentive structure, maybe we do need to start calling them actually low status according to the correct moral theory because it's it's pretty locked in.
56:09
Top schools stay top schools for decades, maybe centuries, perhaps someday millennia. Yeah.
56:15
Well, I will just speaking personally, I I I do not consider uh you know, a school so great on the basis of, you know, it's kind of, you know, huge rejection rate. I think that's terrible.
56:27
The schools I I I respect the most are the ones that actually do the most to develop the most people.
56:35
And it's okay if um any one school does it a certain way because we have a tremendous amount of diversity in higher education and that's good because we have diversity in people and diversity in jobs and diversity in regions, but I I think the problem is more uh when we go to this monoculture and we say there's a single metric by which to judge people, by which to judge universities.
56:55
I I think that's uh a pretty big mistake.
56:59
Now, you hire many people.
56:59
You've worked for McKinsey.
57:01
What's your favorite interview question?
57:06
Um my interview questions tend not to be like a single question that's the same for everybody, which, you know, rightly or wrongly, I tend to be really interested in in what people have done and what they've learned.
57:16
And if if someone describes, you know, kind of a smooth progression without ever making a mistake or ever learning a thing, I'm not that impressed.
57:26
And um I I tend to drill down when I I I get a sign that they that they learned something to really understand what they learned, how they learned it, and um you know, at what cost and how they apply it now.
57:38
So, that that tends to be but it tends to be specific to the uh to the situation and to the role, of course, because I would I'd be looking for different things uh for someone who's doing, let's say, sales or business development versus someone who's doing, you know, analytics.
57:53
Like, someone who's doing sales and business development who um maybe can't sell me on any thing in the interview, I'd be more concerned.
58:02
But, someone who's doing kind of careful research who doesn't sell me on anything in the interview, I I'd be okay with that.
58:07
And how useful do you think are interviews?
58:08
And I mean interviews done by you, not done by a mediocre HR person.
58:13
Uh first of all, there's a lot of wonderful HR people.
58:15
They're not all mediocre.
58:17
And but Sure, but the average interview may not be that useful, right? Yeah, right.
58:21
It might not be, but actually I'm not sure it's the HR person who's got the more mediocre interviews.
58:26
I mean, often I mean, on the one hand, I think uh higher managers uh tend to know better what they need, but they may not be as thoughtful about the interviewing.
58:35
But, setting that aside, um I think interviews can be um really valuable.
58:41
I don't um I I I I I wouldn't hire a senior executive, for example, without um without an interview.
58:49
Um uh and I but for for me at that level, um what I'm looking for a little bit is anomalies.
58:54
Like, I I would put more weight on their track record.
58:59
But, in the interview, I'd want to understand um you know, you call it production function.
59:05
Like, how did they get that track record?
59:06
And um is that something that um is like more at the expense of the others around them or is it something that actually, you know, has sort of built up the success of the team, too?
59:16
And And so, if I if an interview doesn't jive with the track record, like I want to I want to dig deeper.
59:22
deeper. I I think interviews may be overrated for um jobs where there are um or a whole series of interviews might be overrated for jobs where there's a huge number of positions to be filled and the the role is like relatively sort of standardized and and understood and
59:42
and I think I think we should have a lot more where where people can demonstrate their that they're ready for a job and even if they don't get that particular job they get pulled into another similar job without a whole another round of interviews. Very last question. What was it like Very last question.
59:52
What was it like having Charles Goodhart as your advisor for your PhD?
59:58
Oh, well, I Charles Goodhart was actually my referee for my PhD, not my my advisor.
1:00:05
Charles I think he he this was on international payments unions and clearing houses.
1:00:10
So it's central banking, right?
1:00:11
And so well, I would say it was good because number one I got my doctorate and then number two he he recommended it to McMillan and St.
1:00:21
Martin's for publication.
1:00:23
That's why it was published as a book.
1:00:24
It is definitely not my idea that the world needed a book on that but Professor Goodhart thought so.
1:00:30
Payment systems have become a big deal since you wrote that book.
1:00:32
Much bigger than at the time so you were ahead of the curve.
1:00:35
have a I have hedged against the collapse of global economy.
1:00:38
You know, it's become all the more useful.
1:00:40
By Reno Gehrig, thank you very much. Thank you Tyler.