U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by version_five » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

chongli wrote: post #237

SoftTalker wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I don't know Waterloo's situation but I know that money for new buildings is largely decoupled from need for capacity and is mainly tied to government make-work projects. I remember during the 2008 "economic action plan" universities got all kinds of buildings. It was entirely because the government was giving free money away to stimulate growth.

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

#242

Post by gloryjulio » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

itqwertz wrote: post #238

xyzzyz wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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

#243

Post by chaostheory » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 9:46 PM UTC

chongli wrote: post #237

SoftTalker wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

This phenomena doesn’t apply to elite institutions.

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

#244

Post by mortenjorck » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 9:47 PM UTC

chongli wrote: post #237

SoftTalker wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I'm not sure a drop in admissions standards to address the enrollment cliff and a surge in admissions are necessarily mutually exclusive.

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

#245

Post by chongli » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 9:48 PM UTC

Arainach wrote: post #112

photochemsyn wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd prefer police officers with EMT (and preferably paramedic) training to those with four-year sociology degrees. Knowledge of DNA and computer forensic methods and necessities, though, would probably improve their chances of getting promoted, as would legal training. However, those skills could easily be learned at two-year community college progams. All in all, I think this kind of focus would lead to a more profe…

I disagree. Having done a minor in criminal justice, officers, lawmakers, and others involved in the justice system could absolutely benefit from exposure to sociology and academic CJ. The American "justice" system is a travesty and continues following methods that we've known not to work for many decades. To fix the system we need the folks inside it to understand the system. Part of that is education. Part of that…

The US has a fairly large political contingent that believes in retributive justice, not rehabilitative or restorative justice. In a lot of places the police have a culture of the "warrior mentality" and well-meaning new officers are either brought in line or driven out of the profession. This is compounded by the huge numbers of private and illegal/black market firearms on the street which make policing extremely dangerous. The combination reinforces the warrior and the retributive justice cultures alike.

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

#246

Post by BeFlatXIII » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 9:51 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #109

metalspot wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if a job has specific knowledge and skills requirements then it needs to have an objective test that people pass to be able to do the job. that is the only way to eliminate the systemic discrimination that the university system and degree requirements propagate. almost all serious jobs already have objective skills tests and licensing requirements for employment: doctors, lawyers, financial services, heavy equipment…

I'm 100% on-board with requiring an actual med school degree for my doctor rather than a skills-based test.

How would a degree be a stronger signal of competency than a standardized skills-based test?

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

#247

Post by augment003 » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 9:51 PM UTC

nawgz wrote: post #233

augment003 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

#248

Post by wombatpm » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 9:57 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #239

xyzzyz wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 neg…

It was a popular counter culture bumber sticker back in the 60's:

The Police are armed and dangerous.

Not much has changed.

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

#249

Post by rayiner » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 10:02 PM UTC

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #210

rayiner wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are IQ tests (or any standardized test) “culturally sensitive?”

Yeah, particularly the language ones. You do have some non culturally sensitive ones like Ravens matrices, but they're not the default.

By “culture” do you mean being able to speak English? Because I am at a loss as to what else you think is in there.

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

#250

Post by colonCapitalDee » Fri, Apr 28, 2023, 10:02 PM UTC

guynamedloren wrote: post #163

hangonhn wrote: post #61

Tangentially related, at my current job we do not filter candidates by certain "top schools" and it has lead to the most diverse (ethnic, gender, vocational background, social economic, nationality, etc.) team of software engineers I've ever worked on. This is in sharp contrast to all my previous jobs where they consistently filter by a list of schools. Obviously this is not a silver bullet but it's quite shocking to…

I'm clearly naive and haven't worked closely enough to filtering stage of of the hiring process, but nevertheless.. I'm shocked to hear that there was a deliberate and explicit filtering by a list of "top schools. An implicit look at the school and some dose of bias, okay sure, I could see it, but an explicit filter? Wow.

I've seen this in the startup ecosystem; it's a prestige game. When I was applying to jobs last year I would see startups brag on their websites about how many MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, etc grads they had. The most egregious was a startup that had a "select your school" dropdown that was basically the US News top 20 CS schools followed by "other"