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For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time

online.wsj.com

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Re: For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time

#121

Post by nostrademons »

Alex3917 wrote: post #60
menloparkbum wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we don't. I don't want some guild or certification authority telling me I can't program for a living until I've done 2 years of "journeyman" programming and passed my licensing exams.

I'm having trouble finding it right now, but there was a good argument posted here a while back for requiring a certification proving that programmers know how to write secure code. The analogy was that the market can already sort out good chefs from bad chefs, but that there should be a basic certification to prove that you understand food safety.

The difference is that all chefs can make people sick with poor food safety, yet the vast majority of programmers are working on things where security really doesn't matter.

If we had mandatory security certifications, Reddit wouldn't exist. Nor, for that matter, would Windows. And while many of us would probably rejoice at that, I think a lot of people would be pretty pissed off if they had to use OpenBSD.

BTW, I interned at a company that does avionics/medical devices/financial software. Those industries do have strong regulations, like mandatory code reviews and traceability matrices. And that's great for what they do, but I'd hate to see the same standards applied to your Web 2.0 social bookmarking site.

Re: For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time

#122

Post by justin »

stcredzero wrote: post #103
invisible wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I did laugh, I have to ask if this was this a joke? So $1000 or $100 is what you pay (depending on if you fail or succeed)? Aside from the monetary figures you mentioned, sure it sounds like a great idea for a staffing business.

Not a joke. Do you think the amounts are too high? This thing doesn't even have to be a certification. It could be a contest.

This is silly. Programming, networking, etc certifications exist: big companies like MSFT give them out if you jump through all the hoops and prove your high skillz. Fortunately for us crappy programmers on the web, companies that give a shit about those certifications care about hiring people with them, and companies that don't, don't. Yay for free markets!

Re: For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time

#123

Post by DanielBMarkham »

Alex3917 wrote: post #110
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think the author was talking strictly in terms of psychometrics? I assumed he was using common vernacular. Wouldn't it be odd for him to use such a technical term in the middle of an opinion piece in the WSJ?

Well he is probably the world's most famous psychometrician and the article is about psychometrics. I suspect he is using the word incorrectly on purpose because he doesn't like the definition. It's kind of like if a famous conservative wrote a book about the flat tax and titled the book Progressive Taxation .

I'm really not trying to pick a fight, but isn't this just the common use of rhetoric and re-definition that one would find in commentary?

I think your example is a great one. The conservative would then proceed to argue that his definition of "progressive taxation" is adequate for the discussion at hand.

I'm probably just making a big deal out of nothing. I'm just flummoxed at why his own technical field's definition has anything to do with communication directed at a non-technical audience.

Perhaps he used it like that to get the response you gave? That would make sense.

Re: For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time

#124

Post by zandorg »

sh1mmer wrote: post #98
un wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the children of poorer families who don't have the luxury of going to college. The above would be fine if parents/students were paying the full cost of the facilities, but in most cases its government/charity subsidized.

I'm British so the government paid the vast majority of my University fees. The rest were paid for by government loans, which I am now paying back. It really is possible for poorer families to have kids in University in Britain. It's a shame that isn't true everywhere.

I got on a UK degree course just before they started charging.

My only loan was a student one, paying for booze and rent.

Re: For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time

#125

Post by krschultz »

bokonist wrote: post #109
krschultz wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That I agree with, but truthfully it is already there. CPA exam, professional engineer exam, bar exam, medical exams. What doesn't have an exam? Marketing, sales? There is a PE exam for computer engineering/science but no one takes it. Just push people to take them and it will accomplish the same thing.

It's not there because all those professional guilds legally require a college degree. It used to be you could just pass the bar and become a lawyer. The bar associations then got laws passed requiring an actual law degrees, so people took inexpensive correspondence courses. The lawyers then fought back by requiring the schools be accredited, and setting minimum rules for face time. Thus you are forced to pay very ex…

Is it a scam? Do you really want people to be able to get engineering degrees without going through the rigour of a full college education? These are the people who design airplanes and cars and powerplants. Sure maybe it works for Java programming of some BS business app, but most of the exams out there are on fields where screwing up something has major consequences.

Re: For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time

#126

Post by stcredzero »

justin wrote: post #122
stcredzero wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a joke. Do you think the amounts are too high? This thing doesn't even have to be a certification. It could be a contest.

This is silly. Programming, networking, etc certifications exist: big companies like MSFT give them out if you jump through all the hoops and prove your high skillz. Fortunately for us crappy programmers on the web, companies that give a shit about those certifications care about hiring people with them, and companies that don't, don't. Yay for free markets!

More words in my mouth. In many cases, the market settles for something that just shows the hiring manager dotted their I's. (A hoop-jumping exercise that feeds another hoop-jumping exercise.) If there were certifications based on actual results in practice, this would be beneficial on many levels. It would be a way to disseminate good practices, and it would be a more direct indicator of the ability to produce results.

In other words: the market does do something, but someone could do even better.

Re: For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time

#127

Post by stcredzero »

nostrademons wrote: post #121
Alex3917 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having trouble finding it right now, but there was a good argument posted here a while back for requiring a certification proving that programmers know how to write secure code. The analogy was that the market can already sort out good chefs from bad chefs, but that there should be a basic certification to prove that you understand food safety.

The difference is that all chefs can make people sick with poor food safety, yet the vast majority of programmers are working on things where security really doesn't matter. If we had mandatory security certifications, Reddit wouldn't exist. Nor, for that matter, would Windows. And while many of us would probably rejoice at that, I think a lot of people would be pretty pissed off if they had to use OpenBSD. BTW, I in…

Where in the world did I say anything about "manadatory?"

Re: For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time

#128

Post by bokonist »

krschultz wrote: post #125
bokonist wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not there because all those professional guilds legally require a college degree. It used to be you could just pass the bar and become a lawyer. The bar associations then got laws passed requiring an actual law degrees, so people took inexpensive correspondence courses. The lawyers then fought back by requiring the schools be accredited, and setting minimum rules for face time. Thus you are forced to pay very ex…

Is it a scam? Do you really want people to be able to get engineering degrees without going through the rigour of a full college education? These are the people who design airplanes and cars and powerplants. Sure maybe it works for Java programming of some BS business app, but most of the exams out there are on fields where screwing up something has major consequences.

That's what the test is for. In a law it's a scam because requiring professors that teach in person has absolutely nothing to do with learning law. You learn law from studying books and then practicing (apprenticeship). Not from professors. The same is true with almost all professions.

Re: For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time

#129

Post by byrneseyeview »

MaysonL wrote: post #120
byrneseyeview wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your comment. Do you know who Barbara Ehrenreich is? If they are irredeemably right-wing, what is she doing on their editorial page? Murray considers himself a libertarian; Ehrenreich is a socialist. Neither is strictly 'right-wing'. And which errors from The Bell Curve are repeated in his column? I didn't spot any glaring mistakes, but perhaps I did not read as carefully as you did.

You said "Murray has crunched the numbers rather than counting the anecdotes" which may be true, but he crunched the numbers in The Bell Curve too. Given The Bell Curve , none of his number-crunching statements are believable, without close scrutiny. I do know who Barbara Ehrenreich is, and I agree much more with her than with Murray, but calling her a socialist is typical political name-calling. Edit: changed "right…

Okay, so because he made unspecified errors in a book he cowrote years ago, we should not believe what some other social scientists have researched. After all, Murray has cited them!

but calling her a socialist is typical political name-calling.

Apparently you don't 'know who Barbara Ehrenreich is':

http://www.dsausa.org/about/structure.html

She is a a member of the Democratic Socialist party. Her Wikipedia page mentions that she's a socialist before it mentions that she's a writer! Calling her a socialist is like calling Obama a Democrat -- a radical redefinition of name-calling, though it does please me that merely identifying someone as a member of a leftist party is considered grievously insulting.

Re: For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time

#130

Post by byrneseyeview »

scott_s wrote: post #105
byrneseyeview wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like it or not, college is about more than job training. For a lot of people the social life is a big part of it, the first part of life away from parents, but still with some security, and about intellectual exploration It's funny, but I got a whole lot more of that stuff after dropping out. Am I really going to learn more from a place where I don't pay the rent, buy stuff with a meal card, work fifteen hours per we…

I worked a hell of a lot more than 15 hours per week in undergrad, and I showed up to every class. If you don't put much effort into school, don't blame school that you got little out of it.

Was school really the important part, if different people get different results depending on what they do?

That part of my comment was addressing the idea that school prepares 18-22-year-olds for the real world. I think the real world prepares them a lot faster.

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