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How smart do you have to be to get a degree?

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Re: How smart do you have to be to get a degree?

#31

Post by throwaway64554 »

dijit wrote: post #19

Answering the title only, so forgive me: > How smart do you have to be to get a degree? Not especially, what you have to be is hardworking and committed. You don't even need to show significant improvement; just an understanding of the subject material. Of course this gets less true as you go up the degrees. (Batchelors requiring a broad rote understanding, Masters requiring a more detailed understanding and PhD requ…

Throwaway: I have a PhD in CS, and I wouldn't describe myself as very intelligent. Maybe slightly above average. I am constantly amazed at how quickly others in my team can understand extremely complex mathematical problems in a few seconds. I would need at least an hour of quiet thinking, and I struggled a lot with the mathematical aspects of my PhD. But I did work my ass off for 5 years (mostly out of curiosity, though, there was no family pressure, my father is a builder and my mother worked in a supermarket).

Something I noticed: extremely smart people have a tendency to see a problem and quickly sketch the solution in their head, or sketch a proof that the problem cannot be solved. Their overwhelming life experience is that they are always the most intelligent person in the room and that their intuition is always right, and so they quickly mark this problem as "done" / "boring" / "unsolvable". In contrast, people with curiosity but less intellectual confidence tend to experiment with ideas to see if they would work / why they wouldn't work / if they work to a certain degree. I certainly do, and everything I have ever written a paper about, including my dissertation, was discovered during such experiments. If anything, I have a PhD in intellectual naivety.

I know of several extremely smart people in PhD programs who have not produced anything interesting in years, because they shrug off every problem as trivial, see paper writing as below their dignity, and keep themselves busy with teaching. They seem to wait to be automatically rewarded for their intelligence. After all, that is exactly what happened to them in school, and during their Bachelor/Master studies.

Re: How smart do you have to be to get a degree?

#32

Post by tiznow »

dakiol wrote: post #6
Raztuf wrote: post #3

It's obviously anecdotical but I know both many smart persons without higher level education and many 'not-so-bright' persons with university degrees. However, all those with degrees have parents with degrees and those without come from lower class, for the lack of better term, families. If your parents have never set foot in an university and worked manual labor all their live, you are less likely to even consider h…

> If your parents have never set foot in an university and worked manual labor all their live, you are less likely to even consider higher education. That’s not what I have perceived in developing countries. Usually those kind of parents work very hard precisely to allow their children to go to university and have the life they didn’t have. They don’t want their children to work like their parents.

Developing countries are quite different from the USA (which I understand isn't everyone's frame of reference, but is mine). My family is from a developing nation, I was told explicitly as a child to focus on education to try to manifest the best possible (white-collar) life for myself. That's one school of thought. Having a degree in almost anything is probably far more transformative in Africa than the USA, presently.

But, in many pockets of the USA, most people generally do not even consider going to college outside of athletic scholarships because the only people they know who did are teachers, who might end up being some of the lower-paid people they have encountered. Or they've seen people work "by the hand" and end up in a better position than people they know who went to college.

Re: How smart do you have to be to get a degree?

#34

Post by verticalscaler »

We can argue about the degree holders of yesteryear or we can look forward to a more fair and equitable future for the degree holders of tomorrow.

   Seattle high schoolers were told that “Worship of the Written Word” is white supremacy
Before you yell at me about this tidbit or similar rumblings about "knowledge of math" understand that:

1) I've confirmed this off-line first hand with actual parents (who are frankly, besides themselves), not some random news blurb. You can do the same.

2) As uncomfortable as it may be for you to discuss: This will further change the nature of degrees going forward.

I would politely suggest it will devalue them completely but that's just my subjective opinion I suppose.

As a worshipper of the written word I have no idea where we go from here and am looking for some sort of ray of hope because it is getting scary.

Edit: This comment has been almost immediately pinned to the bottom of the thread. Bizarre to say the least. What is going on here?

Re: How smart do you have to be to get a degree?

#36

Post by dachworker »

More people getting an education is a good thing. The value of a degree has not deteriorated just because dumber people are also graduating. If you cannot distinguish yourself from those you deem dumber than you, then you won't be able to arrive to the conclusion I am alluding to.

Re: How smart do you have to be to get a degree?

#37

Post by sheepz »

etothepii wrote: post #20
sheepz wrote: post #8

These results are to be expected, if IQ is normally distributed, but we push more people into obtaining university degrees. The value of a university degree has severely deteriorated since every white collar job essentially requires having one and it will continue getting worse. I would assume that it's worse in the US than in Europe, because in EU it seems that education is less commercialized and you can get a degr…

Doesn't this mean the value of a university degree has increased? If you now have to have a degree just to make it to the 40th percentile of the earning bracket that surely means it is more required than ever, and thus worth more.

I'm not sure I agree. If more people have a university degree, then it's no longer than differentiator that it used to be. To obtain this degree, you have to take on a substantial student loan in the States from what I understand. To me it seems like a big financial risk, which might not pay off in many cases.

So, if we consider value to be the expected life time value of obtaining a degree with respect to the person's net worth and plot it over time I would assume that this value would be decreasing.

Re: How smart do you have to be to get a degree?

#38

Post by hk__2 »

j245 wrote: post #25
sheepz wrote: post #8

These results are to be expected, if IQ is normally distributed, but we push more people into obtaining university degrees. The value of a university degree has severely deteriorated since every white collar job essentially requires having one and it will continue getting worse. I would assume that it's worse in the US than in Europe, because in EU it seems that education is less commercialized and you can get a degr…

The trends for HS and Dropout are also negative. To me it implies education across the board is getting worse (assuming IQ is a good measure of “good” education).

> (assuming IQ is a good measure of “good” education)

It’s not at all.

Re: How smart do you have to be to get a degree?

#39

Post by katzgrau »

Raztuf wrote: post #3

It's obviously anecdotical but I know both many smart persons without higher level education and many 'not-so-bright' persons with university degrees. However, all those with degrees have parents with degrees and those without come from lower class, for the lack of better term, families. If your parents have never set foot in an university and worked manual labor all their live, you are less likely to even consider h…

IDK, I went to a state tech school and the huge majority (including myself) were from union/working class parents with no degrees. For at least my parents, getting a degree was seen as a ticket to a better life.

At the time, that school was also the cheapest (and consistently ranked at best value) so I think it just kind of self selected.

The competing private tech university however … I’m guessing those kids had parents with degrees.

Re: How smart do you have to be to get a degree?

#40

Post by stavros »

throwaway64554 wrote: post #31
dijit wrote: post #19

Answering the title only, so forgive me: > How smart do you have to be to get a degree? Not especially, what you have to be is hardworking and committed. You don't even need to show significant improvement; just an understanding of the subject material. Of course this gets less true as you go up the degrees. (Batchelors requiring a broad rote understanding, Masters requiring a more detailed understanding and PhD requ…

Throwaway: I have a PhD in CS, and I wouldn't describe myself as very intelligent. Maybe slightly above average. I am constantly amazed at how quickly others in my team can understand extremely complex mathematical problems in a few seconds. I would need at least an hour of quiet thinking, and I struggled a lot with the mathematical aspects of my PhD. But I did work my ass off for 5 years (mostly out of curiosity, th…

My sister is a public prosecutor. She's of maybe average intelligence, but she did study for five (or seven?) years, ten hours a day, seven days a week, to pass the test. This was on top of already having graduated from law school.
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