The Flaw In Assortative Mating Theory

In a word: Credentialism.

Credentialism, as defined by CH, is a system where the signaling value of a credential exceeds the content value of the acquired knowledge implied by the credential.

Keep this definition in mind, because it will explain a lot about the shortcomings of assortative mating data.

Assortative mating is the theory that people pair up according to social class, which in modern America is nearly synonymous with educational class. Proponents of assortative mating theory speculate that a cognitive elite — and perhaps soon a racial elite — is evolving from the observed mate choices of the upper classes to marry solely among themselves. Sort of like an “educated class inbreeding”. The mechanism by which educated class inbreeding happens is through meeting one’s mate on college campus, or later at the office or within social circles, both of which tend to be segregated by smarts and its proxy, college degree.

The more generations that pass through the filter of selective breeding for credentials, the likelier that a distinct race of übermensch becomes a permanent piece of the American social scene. A Bindi-style caste system is not far behind.

The flaw in assortative mating theory lies in its major premise: That credentials are as accurate a gauge of smarts and knowledge and social class now as they were in the past.

There’s no doubt women have flooded academia, and now outnumber men on campus by a nontrivial margin.

The fact that the female representation in college has risen so dramatically in such a short time period tells us that genetics are not the driving factor. Women did not suddenly become smarter, nor did they become smarter than men, during their rise to higher ed prominence. No, what happened instead is one-parent families became unaffordable in The Disunited States of Diversity, and, more pertinently, the average college degree lost a lot of its value.

Crudely, women have flooded into college to earn shit degrees like Communications, English, Education, and Women’s Studies.

Liberal arts degrees are useless degrees, because everything you’d wind up doing in a cubicle job with such a degree can be learned in two weeks if you have half a brain. In fact, these degrees are worse than useless, because they saddle women with a mountain of debt that they must pay off by marrying in their dried-up 30s a no-game-having, scarcity-mentality, provider beta male.

The uselessness of humanities degrees to real world value creation is exacerbated by the diversity industrial memeplex, which has further eroded the college cachet by the necessity of dumbing down and grade inflating the degree programs that vibrant students swarm into on the largesse of creator class endowment money.

What you are staring at is the twisted face of credentialism, the college debt racket and status whore end game that proves nothing except that women can be gifted conformist suck-ups in the stampede to earn a parchment declaring them competent at arranging client meetings, thinking inside the box, and mingling with white collar men who satisfy their hypergamous desire.

Empty, status striving credentialism is the reason assortative mating theory is flawed. Men and women aren’t matching up by IQ or class; they’re matching up by credential. Except that, on average, the men’s degrees are actually worth the paper they’re printed on.

Assortative credentialism is the more precise term for the marriage trend that we observe took off after women stormed the campus citadel. Conflating runaway credentialism with IQ misses the fact that today’s paper pushing woman with a communications degree was yesterday’s equally competent secretary with a high school degree, and perhaps even yesteryear’s farmhand mother with sharp instincts for survival.

So there will be no genetic überwench class. This isn’t to say an evolved cognitive elite is impossible; rather, what appears to be happening is less IQ stratification than a perverse reiteration of the patented CH BOSSS (Boss-Secretary Sexual Strategy) sexual market mechanism to reduce wealth and class inequality. The high school grad secretary of yore has been replaced by the college grad secretary of today. And as long as she stays thin and pretty, she’ll catch the eye of that high status man, and GSS data will erroneously pick this up as mate sorting primarily based on college experience or IQ.

There’s another flawed premise bedeviling assortative mating theory: It’s not really assortative MATING as much as it is assortative MARRYING. Whatever marriage trends we see between degreed SWPL women marrying degreed SWPL men are happening later and later in life, late 20s to early 30s. But before then, during those prime female nubility late teens and 20s, marriage rates are low among the “inbred educated class”. However, women aren’t waiting fifteen years in stark celibacy before assortatively marrying. There’s plenty of Pill and rubberized reproduction-thwarted mating going on between ages 15 and 30. The mating is what really animates men, moreso than the marrying. And women *are* assortatively mating, if by assortative we mean women are choosing to fuck sexy alpha cads who aren’t interested in footing the living expenses bills for women with feminist studies expertise who delight at the prospect of earning a paycheck to throw back mimosa-fueled single lady brunches.

Like I’ve said, it’s no coincidence that charismatic jerkboy game rose to prominence at the same time female college attendance and credentialism skyrocketed.

UPDATE

Audacious Epigone adds his pence to the assortative marrying topic.