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U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

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Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#91

Post by bell-cot »

csa wrote: post #80
bell-cot wrote: post #9

I've never heard any justification for having "college education" as a job requirement. Or at least no justification that didn't amount to "keep out people who aren't like us", or "pretend to be competent", or "posture as exclusive".

> I've never heard any justification for having "college education" as a job requirement. In many cases, it’s just an easy way to thin the applicant pool. Given EEO requirements (which have their place), having an easy way to thin the pool (often by a lot) is seen as convenient.

> In many cases, it’s just an easy way to thin the applicant pool.

True. Though one might pay less, under-advertise the job opening, require N years of experience, or many other means to that end.

Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#92

Post by gtop3 »

willcipriano wrote: post #40
efitz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A college degree is a signaling mechanism that you are willing to stick it out until the end in a large bureaucratic environment and not quit. An Ivy League degree is a signal that “you’re one of us”.

Those sound like just the people you want to hire if you want to build a lumbering bureaucratic organization.

Do you think U.S. Representative Staffers are not interacting with lumbering bureaucratic organizations?

Being able to navigate and succeed in these organizations is a skill every organization with employees needs.

Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#93

Post by metalspot »

photochemsyn wrote: post #68
bell-cot wrote: post #9

I've never heard any justification for having "college education" as a job requirement. Or at least no justification that didn't amount to "keep out people who aren't like us", or "pretend to be competent", or "posture as exclusive".

Highly technical jobs in chemistry, physics, engineering, molecular biology require a certain kind of college education that involves a lot of hands-on experience in research labs. The traditional college coursework is not nearly as important as what amounts to vocational training working side-by-side with technicians, grad students, postdocs etc. There's no real way to acquire the needed experience without getting i…

> a private company just isn't going to invest the time and energy needed to train an apprentice

not as long as they can force people to pay for it themselves and have the government and the tax payers subsidize it.

universities were never meant to be vocational schools though, and they do a horrible job at it.

to take computer science as an example: a 4 years bachelor degree only has about 500 hours of classroom instruction in comp sci subjects.

a 9-5 vocational training program can provide 480 hours of classroom instruction in 3 months.

the idea that students benefit by going to a university where they only spend a few hours a day learning and the rest of the time playing games, socializing, drinking and doing drugs, is absurd.

put people in a 9-5 40 hour a week program that has the same attendance and performance requirements as the job they are training for and they can be trained to the level of any bachelors degree in 3-6 months.

Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#94

Post by gtop3 »

whydoyoucare wrote: post #20

University education has a been a "baseline" to determine qualified candidates. It also sorta implies broadened horizons, overall mature thought process, and several other qualities that are desirable the advisors/staffers. What other alternatives exists to University education that impart the same level of knowledge and understanding to an individual that can be consistently measured? If education is expensive, then…

A University education is not the only valid signal, but it is one of the best signals that is widely accessible. Going through public K-12 and then a State University is a very paved path.

There's a lot of ways to begin lowering the cost of University education. Some of it relays on students being able to make good decisions. Students in general have been preferring schools with lots of expensive services and facilities, and schools have been increasing their tuition to pay for it. Other aspects would be to fight administrative overhead creep that is well documented.

There's more radical ways of handling it. Price limits tied to state/federal funding. Restructuring student loans so that the Federal Government is the buyer instead of the student, and using larger buyer status to negotiation with schools.

I think the free market will force schools to lower prices, and the number of students fall. This fall of students has been expected for awhile, and covid seems to have accelerated it.

Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#95

Post by yamtaddle »

polski-g wrote: post #89
yamtaddle wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The 1971 Supreme Court decision remains largely unknown, but no ruling of the past forty-five years (except for Roe v. Wade) has done more harm to the American way of life. Rolls eyes so hard they nearly come out of skull Yeah, it probably had some effect, but I'd say there are a lot of reasons, probably starting with the GI Bill. Why settle for a high school grad when there's a glut of veteran-college-grads sudden…

> Why settle for a high school grad when there's a glut of veteran-college-grads suddenly on the market You didn't need to "settle" for anything prior to this decision. You could simply screen for candidates based on innate cognitive ability. Going to college or not does not change that attribute.

Why have we seen a similar rise in crendialism in countries without similar rulings or laws? Where's the demand for Griggs-compliant intelligence testing? Such a thing is permitted! Where is it?

This may be a small—very small—part of the puzzle, but I don't see a compelling case that we can point to it and say, "yep, that's what did it!" I don't even see enough to make it look like that's a valuable direction to further examine. The evidence is scant, and behavior we see doesn't look like it ought to if that were the main cause.

> You could simply screen for candidates based on innate cognitive ability.

You could apply racist or sexist requirements laundered through "testing". The whole reason the case was brought was that that was actually happening.

Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#96

Post by greenhearth »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #73
whydoyoucare wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is rare to gain relevant work experience without having a basic framework for the said work, and consistency to measure that basic framework from a pool of candidates, both which come from college/university education. Equivalency can be established for senior positions, not entry level ones. I assume the staffers do have entry level positions. Can a plumber or an electrician claim to possess experience to become…

Honestly, tradework like plumbing or electrical might be a surprisingly good qualification for entry-level congressional staff positions. Project management, scheduling, finance, and perhaps most importantly dealing with (sometimes pissed off) customers/constituents and the tradeoffs of what is possible, versus feasible, versus affordable. Realistically a lot of the function of undergraduate degrees (in fields withou…

I think this romanticization of plumbers has really gotten out of hand.

Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#97

Post by augment003 »

nawgz wrote: post #76
augment003 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College degrees don’t seem to have done anything to make the police less abusive. Why waste money on them when we could instead give police better police training and resources?

> College degrees don’t seem to have done anything to make the police less abusive Sorry, but can we try to talk in facts? In Canada, since 2000, there have been 704 police-involved deaths [0]. Let's take a conservative population of 30M for Canada (which will inflate this stat) - then we get: 704 / 22 / 30M => 1 in 1 million Canadians die at the hands of police per year On the other hand, in the US, there were 1022…

Erm, your argument has nothing to do with college degrees at all. You’re just saying Canadian police shoot less people than American police, which nobody is disputing.

Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#98

Post by justincredible »

Ensorceled wrote: post #52
bell-cot wrote: post #9

I've never heard any justification for having "college education" as a job requirement. Or at least no justification that didn't amount to "keep out people who aren't like us", or "pretend to be competent", or "posture as exclusive".

> I've never heard any justification for having "college education" as a job requirement. Really? Never? "A degree shows they have learned how to learn." "A degree shows they can stick with something for 3-4 years." "A degree shows they have learned how to write." "A degree is needed because high school education sucks so bad now."

[dead]

Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#99

Post by efitz »

jewayne wrote: post #45
efitz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was there credible doubt that would have been alleviated with proof?

There of course was never a credible doubt that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, either.

I agree; no need to downvote me.

Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#100

Post by efitz »

triceratops wrote: post #69
jewayne wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There of course was never a credible doubt that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, either.

It wouldn't have mattered either way because his mother was a US citizen, making him a natural-born citizen even if he were born in outer space.

Obama of course was born in Hawaii and of course he was a US citizen.

That said, the law at the time was that if your father wasn’t a citizen, then your mother had to be a citizen AND had to have been living in the US for the previous 5 years.

Dumb law IMO but it was the law and was raised by a lot of birthers.

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