Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

kare11.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 314 posts

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

#231

Post by electriclove »

stainablesteel wrote: post #156
gnicholas wrote: post #148

This is really great. I've been talking with friends who have high schoolers, and it's clear that the college preparation and application process is incredibly stressful, time-consuming, and expensive. And that's for the kids who are a reasonably good fit for college, and who have supportive parents. But so much of the market value of a college degree is in the signaling (just showing you were smart enough to get in)…

i completely agree, the stress induced from the process of prepping for college and jumping through other bureaucratic hoops is not worth the cost and the cost is not worth the end result i do pharmaceutical work, and my employer will only hire people with bachelors degrees but i swear i could teach this to a middle schooler. there's no reason we can't allow people to learn from life rather than learn for bureaucrati…

I totally agree but I don’t see how the system will change. I certainly can’t convince my employer, can you?

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

#232

Post by nawgz »

jpadkins wrote: post #225
nawgz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Compare Canada to Vermont, NH, Wisconsin, Montana and Idaho and see if your difference still holds. USA is a big place, with very different cultures and outcomes. Once you compare Canada to states that are culturally like Canada, your university hypothesis doesn't look to be correct. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/police-kill...

Can you provide more sources that show Police education by state? While I don't disagree with the premise you are suggesting in and of itself, the link you've provided is entirely insufficient to make the calculations about police education and per capita police violence rate

I found [0], which in Appendix F has a state-by-state breakdown for only some states. Cross referencing it with your data source is useless, all the top states for per-capita police killings have their data omitted from that table.

[0]: https://www.policinginstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10...

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

#233

Post by nawgz »

augment003 wrote: post #219
nawgz wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> consider vast differences I did. Gun ownership is about 32% of individuals in USA vs 25% of individuals in Canada. Homicide rate is about 2.5x higher in the US, which means US cops are outperforming this statistic vs US civilians. > so many other things It's not just annoying to list them, it's ridiculous; these countries are the exact same place. Across the board, everything you can think of has a lot of statistic…

Have you considered handguns as a factor?

Handguns are the most interesting statistic here, with the US being a serious outlier (58%! vs 12% in Canada), it could be related

I still don't see how you deny that more educated officers are less violent when I've made multiple links supporting that argument

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

#234

Post by Retric »

xyzzyz wrote: post #221
alistairSH wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mixed feelings... police in the US are woefully/tragically undertrained relative to police in Europe. 3-4 months is typical for a police academy in the US. Plus 6 months or so with a field training officer for basic on-job training. Compared to 2.5 years of the same in Germany. College may not be the right answer, but the current system of very little training isn't working.

Being a cop in Germany is much easier and less risky job than in US, because they have 50% more cops per capita while having something like 15% the crime rate of US. This means that, as a very rough estimate, there is something like 16 times more crimes per cop in US than in Germany. This is made even worse by things like US criminal being much more insane and erratic than German ones (Germany has a more collectivist…

It’s very difficult to compare numbers between countries like this because of different definitions. In the US are INS or FBI agents cops, what about secret service agents dealing with counterfeiters or protecting the president? How about detectives, dispatchers, part timers, managers etc. This is why you will see wildly different number of how many cops there are in the US generally it’s between 600k and 1 million but there’s many different counts.

When comparing things to Germany simply don’t see a 1:1 fit for what’s a US law enforcement officer.

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

#235

Post by hot_gril »

j-bos wrote: post #182
hot_gril wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you aren't targeting a field that requires a college education, even a cheap one is still pretty expensive in terms of time and money, and some subjects at some schools can be really weak. I can see why some people would opt for trade school or just learning on the job. What annoys me a little is when highly paid software engineers around me say college is pointless, when every single one of them went to a good co…

Chiming in for context (representation?): I grew up thinking college was a must for making big bucks but still didn't think it was worth it. After going to a trade school and doing jobs related and unrelated to my trade, I ended up needing big bucks and time. So I went to a boot camp and am now one of those software engineers. I don't think college is pointless, but I am so glad I didn't go. My point being, bringing…

For software engineering, that makes sense. I think it's only worthwhile if some conditions are right (good school and covered costs). Which it was for those guys.

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

#237

Post by chongli »

SoftTalker wrote: post #184
ok123456 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's Goodhart's law in action. If having a four year degree becomes just a checkbox, there will be easier and easier ways of getting that checkbox. There will be rent-seeking entities that will facilitate this like degree mills and dubious online programs. It no longer becomes a qualification that the person has gained any skills, but only that they were able to finance paying tens of thousands of dollars to particip…

It's not just degree mills. It's mainstream colleges and universities. They are all staring a demographic "enrollment cliff" in the face and are having to drop admissions standards to keep their enrollment numbers up. Academic requirements are going by the wayside; if you can't complete an assignment, you'll be given more time, or an alternative. Nobody fails anymore unless they just absolutely don't show up, schools…

Not all. I definitely believe large numbers of liberal arts schools are having problems. But my school (University of Waterloo) has only seen dramatic surges in enrolment over the past 5 years. They're putting up new buildings like crazy just to accommodate all of them! And we're not talking sports centres or rec complexes, we're talking about big lecture halls and buildings full of classrooms and study spaces!

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

#238

Post by itqwertz »

xyzzyz wrote: post #221
alistairSH wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mixed feelings... police in the US are woefully/tragically undertrained relative to police in Europe. 3-4 months is typical for a police academy in the US. Plus 6 months or so with a field training officer for basic on-job training. Compared to 2.5 years of the same in Germany. College may not be the right answer, but the current system of very little training isn't working.

Being a cop in Germany is much easier and less risky job than in US, because they have 50% more cops per capita while having something like 15% the crime rate of US. This means that, as a very rough estimate, there is something like 16 times more crimes per cop in US than in Germany. This is made even worse by things like US criminal being much more insane and erratic than German ones (Germany has a more collectivist…

There is an active political element in the U.S. that believes that “defunding” police is the answer. While they may have some valid arguments, they don’t see things from your perspective at all.

We had city-burning protests for months for a career criminal high on illegal drugs committing crime. In a few days after, there were worldwide protests and political statements (GF portraits on the Berlin Wall?!?). Those that support this obvious push towards more chaos and police oversight have deep pockets and international reach.

Real change in the US comes from tragedy and money.

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

#239

Post by slg »

xyzzyz wrote: post #221
alistairSH wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mixed feelings... police in the US are woefully/tragically undertrained relative to police in Europe. 3-4 months is typical for a police academy in the US. Plus 6 months or so with a field training officer for basic on-job training. Compared to 2.5 years of the same in Germany. College may not be the right answer, but the current system of very little training isn't working.

Being a cop in Germany is much easier and less risky job than in US, because they have 50% more cops per capita while having something like 15% the crime rate of US. This means that, as a very rough estimate, there is something like 16 times more crimes per cop in US than in Germany. This is made even worse by things like US criminal being much more insane and erratic than German ones (Germany has a more collectivist…

Wild to suggest that the US's issue is not incarcerating enough people considering we are near the top of the global leaderboards on that front. Specifically in comparison to Germany, the incarceration rate is almost 8x higher in the US.

You are also ignoring how the unprofessional nature of police contribute to the problem. Their behavior creates an adversarial relationship with the public. This has all sorts of negative repercussions. It helps escalate crime because cops are now more dangerous and less predictable, so people will go to greater lengths to avoid arrest or interaction with police. It also makes the cops' jobs more difficult as the community becomes less likely to cooperate in stopping or preventing crime. Hiring more cops can make matters worse because it can necessitate lowering the bar to find enough people to hire leading to even less professional behavior. It also creates more interactions between police and the community which as I mentioned, is often an adversarial interaction due to this unprofessional behavior.

Simply hiring more cops and throwing more people in jail isn't going to fix things. That should be obvious because that is all we ever seem to attempt in the US and the situation isn't getting better.

Post reply on HN