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

That actual title says almost literally nothing.

If I recall correctly, they have been trending upwards for the the past 100 years (up 30 points but I doubt the average person was clinically retarded) and only relatively recently has started to show a slight decline. IQ tests from 100 years ago are still pretty valid, they use military tests I believe. Double check that.

> 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

Maybe. But one thing I've noticed is that, in Europe at least, there's a huge difference people who value learning and working and those who don't: degree or not. There are people who've been doing manual labor their entire lives who value learning, knowledge and working.

One parent of mine got a university degree, the other didn't. I'm entirely self-taught (in more than one domain) but the thing is: my parents valued learning. My mom would, after work, create "learning games" for us, for example.

A friend of mine is a lawyer: his parents and grandparents were farmers/paesants but they valued working. He is proud of being the son and grandson of "paysants" ("peasants"). My wife's grandparent was an intellectual working... In a coal mine (after WWII he had no choice: he ended in a country where he didn't speak the language and the only job he was offered was in a coal mine).

Heck, my grandfather was a lawyer but he quit lawyering to... Build chalets in the countryside. With his own hands. He was doing manual labor but he was an intellectual and very well educated.

I've got lots of respect for farmers / blue collar working people. But I cannot stand the entitled, 90 IQ, people holding a bullshit degree (not all degrees are bullshit) and doing bullshit work and asking for 28 hours workweek while I've got doctors friends whom, after 10 years+ of studies, are working their arses off (for a great salary, granted).

My point being: there's higher education (like becoming a doctor or the engineer working on the machines that doctors do use to cure cancers) and "higher" education, as TFA shows.

People don't like IQ as a measurement but I know the IQ of those who make these machines and those who create medicine. And I know smart plumbers, electricians, farmers, ...

I've got friends (well, family really) who are both doctors and they don't get to see their kids as much as they would like to: but they explained me that they prefer their kid growing up seeing as role models people who save other people's lives and who work hard to do that.

They consider their job useful. Just as they consider a plumber's job useful (I had to dig once for five hours in human manure to locate a clogged pipe on a sunday to save the plumber some time on monday morning... Though job they do these guys: yup, it's virtually always men doing that).

But bring me someone with a 90 IQ holding a "gender studies" "higher education" degree and I'll want to slap him/her/zhe in the face with a cluestick for they produce jack shit of value to society.

There are four distinct concepts at play;

  -  Innate capability, as intelligence, drive etc

  -  Access, in terms of money and background culture

  -  Accumulated capability, as education or training

  -  Credentials, certificates

Two are input conditions, two are outputs.

Some people are born smart, but they choose not to go to university. Or they live in a culture where it's unnecessary. They thrive as autodidacts. Or they are lone wolves who can accumulate capability on their own much better.

Others are born smart but they have no access, no family money, no grants or loans, or they live in a culture that frowns on class mobility. If they are lucky they can self-teach anyway or find mentors. If they are unlucky they are sadly wasted. That's a lot of people in the world, because IQ and global intelligence has been steadily rising.

Some people are born dumb as a brick, but they have family who insist, and pay for them to attend. Or they live in a culture that shoehorns everyone through university as a matter of course, or as a holding pen for youth.

The outputs of formal education likewise vary. Some really smart people go to university and fail. Some universities are awful. Students come out lacking the piece of paper their parents and gatekeepers want.

And of course there are some really dumb people should never have gone to university, but they were sold it, or pushed, and their failure is a real knock-back in life. I've seen university destroy many young people. It's a fucking tragedy and I absolutely blame the extractive wannabe culture of education as a cosmetic product.

Some cognitively challenged people manage to cheat and weasel their way through obtaining a degree certificate. Maybe they're not so dumb huh, because they learn guile and corruption necessary for modern life.

Regardless the credentials, some people may or may not obtain an actual education while at university. The space, free time, the library, access to smart professors... these are all opportunities to blossom. Some, at the lower ranking universities, merely get parochial training, which expires within a year and they need to "retrain". In this way education is a great racket.

Some people follow the path of enlightenment. They really do start out quite intellectually weak, but while at university they find themselves, study hard, become well educated and smarter as they "learn how to learn" and the value of knowledge and self-discipline. For them, university is the making of them.

Some even follow this path and realise late in the game that the certificate isn't worth waiting for, so they jump off and start life early. I believe Messrs. Gates and Zuckerberg fall into this group.

Anyway, in 30 years as a visiting professor I've seen all of these things and more. Higher education varies around the world, as do the cultures that set the value and desirability of HE.

The problem is that western universities have become degenerate. They've been taken over by a toxic culture of financialism and professional management and are no longer fit places for teaching, learning and research. They fall into the GIGO taxonomy, as degree mills where you pay £20,000 or whatever, and you damn well expect a degree. And if you don't get one then sue.

And to be honest, in the UK that's most of them now, not just the provincials but the Russell Groups too. The only reason to go is for the networking and certificate and that requires a gatekeeper culture to keep up its value - one which is rapidly crumbling.

When people ask me now, "Is it worth getting a degree?", I have to be very sceptical. What do you really want to do in life and what sort of person are you?, those are the more important questions.

Too much curiosity can be dangerous. As I child, I constantly opened electrical devices to see how they worked internally, resulting in several 230 V shocks (the notion of alternating current instantly made sense to me in 8th grade, because you feel the line frequency as an extreme vibration in the hand when you get shocked). My wife stuck a plastic toy into an outlet as a child to see if plastic really was a bad conductor. The toy had some glitter paint on it, and apparently, that paint was a good conductor.