The Scholar’s Years

A young woman wanted to prove she was intelligent. She could simply say so. But so could anyone.

Instead, she spent four years at a demanding university — studying subjects she would never directly use, passing examinations that tested endurance as much as knowledge.

An employer looked at her credentials and thought: “I don’t know if she learned anything useful. But I know she endured something difficult. That tells me something about her.”

The degree didn’t signal knowledge. It signaled the capacity to do hard things. And that signal worked because it was costly to produce and nearly impossible to fake.