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Education Inflation

phillipwhisenhunt.blogspot.com

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Re: Education Inflation

#11

Post by TheElder »

hooande wrote: post #9
TheElder wrote: post #6

As a white male, I felt pretty good in graduate school (for computer science). I was often the only white in my graduate classes. While there were plenty of Chinese, Koreans, and Indians, there weren't any whites. This made me realize what a great opportunity I had. The whites were mainly in liberal arts, business, marketing, accounting, and English. What does that mean for me? It means that my peers, mainly other wh…

Wow. This is one of the most racist comments I have ever seen on hacker news.

I'm honestly asking, what is racist about my comment? It's about race, but why is it racist? I don't mean to be racist, nor do I want to be a racist. I removed the article.

Re: Education Inflation

#12

Post by RevRal »

TheElder wrote: post #6

As a white male, I felt pretty good in graduate school (for computer science). I was often the only white in my graduate classes. While there were plenty of Chinese, Koreans, and Indians, there weren't any whites. This made me realize what a great opportunity I had. The whites were mainly in liberal arts, business, marketing, accounting, and English. What does that mean for me? It means that my peers, mainly other wh…

If what you're saying is legitimate, then you need to extrapolate more. There are too many loose ends in your post....

Re: Education Inflation

#13

Post by barrkel »

bokonist wrote: post #8
lionhearted wrote: post #3

> If the inflation in education continues, I cannot imagine what kind of degree it will take to get a job in the future...imagine everyone being a PhD? It's the opposite actually - when everyone is doing the same thing, you don't differentiate by doing the same thing plus more of that same thing. You differentiate by doing something totally different. Writing open source software, freelancing, and traveling for four…

The problem is that the college/grad school credential is a legal requirement for a vast number of well paying jobs.

Migration from one country to another also generally requires credentials.

Re: Education Inflation

#14

Post by barrkel »

TheElder wrote: post #11
hooande wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. This is one of the most racist comments I have ever seen on hacker news.

I'm honestly asking, what is racist about my comment? It's about race, but why is it racist? I don't mean to be racist, nor do I want to be a racist. I removed the article.

Your post assumes that only "whites" are your peers, and that in competition, non-"whites" are somehow automatically disqualified; and that lack of CS accredited "whites", as opposed to non-"whites" is "probably bad for the overall state of the country", i.e. that the relative status of "whites" has a moral worth.

Re: Education Inflation

#15

Post by NathanKP »

lionhearted wrote: post #3

> If the inflation in education continues, I cannot imagine what kind of degree it will take to get a job in the future...imagine everyone being a PhD? It's the opposite actually - when everyone is doing the same thing, you don't differentiate by doing the same thing plus more of that same thing. You differentiate by doing something totally different. Writing open source software, freelancing, and traveling for four…

I agree. The people I see at my college are proof that you can get a degree and know nothing. I am getting a degree, but I'm going to rely more heavily on being able to show potential employers that I have practical experience working on different web startups. That is far more valuable than waving around a degree for the simple reason that lazy people have cheapened the value of the degree.

Re: Education Inflation

#16

Post by Fixnum »

RevRal wrote: post #10
Fixnum wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"... the competent people are still competent ..." Sadly, one could adduce many reasons this no longer remains true.

I'm trying to understand. Are you saying that the competent are being held back?

As far as I can tell, opening the universities to the masses damages the classes, standards, and student-faculty relations to the point where those who really 'ought' to be at university rather than at technical colleges don't benefit in the same way as previously. Perhaps this is just elitism, but I get the feeling that the 'bright' entering students are still the 'bright' graduating students, but gain much less deep knowledge than in the past. Of course, this applies to all disciplines, not just CS. As famous mathematician S Novikov said in 2002:

"In the West, however, there was also an abrupt fall in the level of college and school education in physics and mathematics in the last 20-25 years, and in the USA the decline in school education was apparently particularly steep. I can clearly see that contemporary education cannot produce a theoretical physicist capable of passing Landau’s theoretical minimum." (http://www.mi.ras.ru/~snovikov/cris_en.pdf)

Basically, this education crisis seems to me to be endemic to developed societies. I don't have a clear thesis on this yet, but it seems that when a society progresses from "Education is a route from poverty to paradise" to the anti-liberal "Everyone should receive fourteen years of education" that the quality of education rapidly declines.

Re: Education Inflation

#17

Post by bokonist »

barrkel wrote: post #14
TheElder wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly asking, what is racist about my comment? It's about race, but why is it racist? I don't mean to be racist, nor do I want to be a racist. I removed the article.

Your post assumes that only "whites" are your peers, and that in competition, non-"whites" are somehow automatically disqualified; and that lack of CS accredited "whites", as opposed to non-"whites" is "probably bad for the overall state of the country", i.e. that the relative status of "whites" has a moral worth.

If his peer group is in fact white, then it's not racist, just a statement of reality. And as for competition, most people only care about competing within their own peer/status group. And yes, it is bad for the economy if whites are significantly under invested in engineering. It's bad for the economy if anyone or any group is under invested in engineering. Anything "assumed" or implied by his post, is added by you, not by the original poster.

Let's save the racist card/downvotes for when someone actually makes personally disparaging remarks about someone of another race, not when someone just makes earnest and frank observations about society.

Re: Education Inflation

#18

Post by xel02 »

hristov wrote: post #7

You know it did not use to be like that. Things changed just recently. It is interesting because I went to college exactly as things were changing so I saw the difference first hand. When I started college in the 90's personal computers and the internet were just hitting the mainstream and people started hearing stories about how computer nerds were getting rich. So of course the computer science and computer enginee…

As a student I agree that there should be a way to differentiate ourselves -- but I think there already is.

I started thinking Med school but I liked computer science so I did a Combined Major in computer science and microbiology. I found computer science as my passion, and more specifically I'm fascinated by machine learning.

Now I'm doing a Combined Honour in computer science and microbiology with a minor in statistics. I'm choosing courses that emphasize artificial intelligence and machine learning.

It will depend on the university but I think any student who really wants to differentiate themselves can do so. If not through their specialization choice (i.e. majors and minors) through course choices as well as activities outside of courses but still within the university system like research.

Of course there is always freelancing, open-source and code contests.

Re: Education Inflation

#19

Post by [deleted] »

TheElder wrote: post #6

As a white male, I felt pretty good in graduate school (for computer science). I was often the only white in my graduate classes. While there were plenty of Chinese, Koreans, and Indians, there weren't any whites. This made me realize what a great opportunity I had. The whites were mainly in liberal arts, business, marketing, accounting, and English. What does that mean for me? It means that my peers, mainly other wh…

[deleted]

Re: Education Inflation

#20

Post by [deleted] »

TheElder wrote: post #6

As a white male, I felt pretty good in graduate school (for computer science). I was often the only white in my graduate classes. While there were plenty of Chinese, Koreans, and Indians, there weren't any whites. This made me realize what a great opportunity I had. The whites were mainly in liberal arts, business, marketing, accounting, and English. What does that mean for me? It means that my peers, mainly other wh…

[deleted]
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