Ask HN: Any certification that is worth it? Legitimately helped your career?

> recommending that people choose dive schools that take their Job seriously and don't pass people who haven't mastered the skills

I think the point was that such schools get bad reviews, and look like bad choices, might get out completed by more lax schools

Apparently academia (universities) works a bit in the same way, there was a recent HN discussion

Another comment in this thread seems to have hit on one of the problems, Universities are focused not on vocational education, which is the reason most people attend university , and what most employers expect when they demand a degree from their employee's. Instead universities are focused on "academic qualification" which may have limited to no real world vocational value .

>At the same time, it's not as if professional development is a given with 'years of experience' and companies frequently fail to develop people in any meaningful sense.

I 100% agree with this, I know a few "experienced" people that are not really experienced, which is why I did not simply state that one should automatically attain this experienced based degree simply on chronological paid experience but rather experience + something else

Someone bought up WGU's method of crediting some life experience, that is a good start but I don't think WGU's program goes far enough but it is on the right path, and I which more institutions would start doing more things like them.

>I certainly know people who consider their college experiences extremely rigorous - electrical engineers and so on, so it's absolutely not the case that college can't be rigorous (for any field).

Again I agree here, some fields may lend themselves to an actual degree program, Doctors for example. I think my ideal society would be less than 30% of jobs requiring a post secondary education degree, the vast majority of employment should be encompassed by regular primary / secondary (k-12) education, and maybe direct vocational training (paid by employers)

Instead we pushed the narrative the most jobs need post secondary education or to be successful one must get a degree.

Allowing for experienced based degree's , IMO would start to open other avenues and maybe start a shift in human resources to start looking at other things that just a check mark for "has degree" true or false

Of course the extreme cost of education, and the debt crisis is also doing that slowly

ill set the stage again a bit for context,

I don't own a plane or fly in 135 charters, I'm a member of a flight club that owns a few planes. As a member I effectively rent the planes from the club at a very reasonable rate with a small fixed monthly cost for things like storage etc. The planes are not used for primary training and are only available to club members. They are very well equipped IFR capable aircraft that are very well maintained. The club is small enough that its pretty easy to get a plane when you want/need one. With that in mind here are some cool things the club has aloud me to do.

1) I have moved a few times since I got my PPL and some of my friends have as well. At this point I have fairly close friends all up and down the eastern seaboard. The plane has aloud me to see them regularly without very much complex planning and often for lunch or breakfast when it would otherwise need to be for the whole weekend. Just yesterday I flew down south a bit to meet a buddy for breakfast that I otherwise would not have been able to drive to do do such a thing. This has been a really nice aspect of flying.

2) We have some family that lives close but not super close (7ish hour drive). The plane has aloud us to be part of their new borns life in a tangible way. Similar to seeing friends that I otherwise couldn't

3) The plane has expanded my weekend trip options. We have explored islands, gone to further cities and seem more than we would in a car. There are just north of 16,000 airfields in the US and only a small chunk of them service commercial traffic. I can get my little plane into pretty much all of them and land super close to lots of interesting places.

4) Ive been able to leverage interesting one day opportunities: Is there a once in a decade eclipse coming, best viewing spot is 600 miles, lets take the plane for the day. Is there an airshow somewhere lets fly in and check it out. Ferries booked to Nantucket for the weekend, take the plane. Want to get some chowder the vineyard for lunch, take the plane. Wedding in the Hamptons, traffic looking like its gonna be 6 hours to get there, take the plane. Buddies bachelor part is far and you need to get there friday potentially stuck in hours of beach traffic, take the plane (and pick up some friends along the way!)Before anyone jumps to "its super expensive to do those things" the fact is, in a reasonable GA plane its about the same cost as driving +fees for dealing with cars these days. My plane gets the gas milage of an SUV and most airports charge less than $20 a day for ramp parking, free if you buy some fuel typically. Some cities have silly $2 mandatory parking fees or what ever but if your careful about picking which small airport you go to in a city you can usually fly in for VERY cheap or free if you buy gas and you generally need to buy gas anyway... With tolls and gas prices the way they are its usually not much of a price difference to take the plane even after rental costs are figured in.

> my comment was just proposing some kind of workable solution to what I see in the employment market where employers have degree requirements

Again, it's no solution. Employers would not consider such honorary degrees to be equivalent to regular degrees.

> The vast majority of students are students for the sole purpose of career placement, no other reason.

Plenty of people study philosophy, despite having little direct applicability outside academia. That's not to say they're wasting their time and money.

> pushing academic achievement, while ignoring the societal goal / desire of vocational education

Do you mean to say there's a shortage of institutions that offer vocational training?

I'm confident you're right that they get less government funding.

> experience based degree's would start the shift that IMO is needed back to vocational studies and away from academic achievement

Academic degrees were never about vocational studies.

Vocational degrees exist, awarded by institutions which are not universities, but if I understand correctly they generally have little traction. This might not be true of every country though.

In my experience, I was able to fairly accurately glean a lot about the culture of a dive shop by the reviews it got.

I think that people often just go with the cheapest option without doing the additional research.