201–210 of 410 posts
It would be interesting if colleges offered a reduced or free tuition in exchange for future earnings. That might incentivize colleges to only offer certain degrees, help with job placements, keep the quality of learning high, etc.
I think this is generally a good thing. I believe there are really two positive things that can come out of going to college - either you get a name-brand degree that opens doors and gets your resume looked at, or you get useful skills that enable you to go down a particular career path (e.g. CS degree). Obviously in some cases it'll be both. The reality is it's really tough to make any case that a humanities degree…
The third reason explains why small, residential liberal arts schools carry on semi-successfully for decades (centuries!?) even though they aren't exactly towering champions on the first two metrics.
It's easy to mock the English major from Knox College in downstate Illinois or the psychology major from Prairie View in Texas. But I'll argue that in the Before Times, these schools and their graduates did a lot to hold the social fabric of the United States together. Liberal arts grads do quite nicely in sales, administration, community law practices and more. They've got people skills that some high-earning Stanford grads lack. They take care of one another and provide a strong baseline economy that creates customers for us all.
What's changed is that with the pandemic, we've lost the residential-college benefits of meeting those freshman hallmates turned allies for life. In that case, paying big $$ for what's really just an online education without a valuable network stops having much appeal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Most people people don't realize just how much name recognition matters when sifting through resumes. I think most people do realize it, which is why we're seeing what's being written about in the article. People realize if you merely want to be educated, you can do that for cheap or free anywhere, but nobody in HR screening resumes cares if you're educated. They care that you have name-brand pedigree. I remember f…
The longer I watch this unfold the more become convinced that the US is a giant social experiment to see what happens when you apply profit-maximization to literally everything. Minimize cost, maximize revenue, the difference goes to the pimps: a race with no ending and an evergrowing number of losers. Wonder when this'll fall apart (if ever). I guess it's a good thing the majority of people worldwide are not exposed…
You forgot the key: Split the "losers" roughly 50-50 along some carefully crafted political/ideological lines, and have them fight each other rather than unite and fight the pimps.
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Did it ever occur to you at all that people might value education for its own sake and not for potential financial yield alone?
Every reply to you is repeating the same thing and they’re all wrong. Woe on the next great sociologist, philosopher, or artist who gets discouraged from study because “just do CS so you can make money” or “just go to the library it’s literally the same thing as four years of training under experts in the field and discussion with other smart young people.”
I kind of feel it may be a made up field to promote forms of Marxism and not something that actually contributes much to the body of human knowledge. Nothing entirely wrong with that either if it's something a person is into, it's just, well, we might actually be better off with less sociology students. The half baked and non realistic ideas that come out of that cause problems in the real world.
The reason I feel this is not from outside observation but because I spent a bunch of time in sociology classes many years ago. 4 as I recall. I wish I'd spent the time in extra math classes and I believe the world would be better off if people did.
I think this is generally a good thing. I believe there are really two positive things that can come out of going to college - either you get a name-brand degree that opens doors and gets your resume looked at, or you get useful skills that enable you to go down a particular career path (e.g. CS degree). Obviously in some cases it'll be both. The reality is it's really tough to make any case that a humanities degree…
> or you get useful skills that enable you to go down a particular career path (e.g. CS degree) I so completely disagree. College/university is for education. If you want skills go to a trade school and save a truck load of money. As an example lawyers and doctors don’t gain skills in law/medical school. They are required to slosh through forced internships for that. CompSci graduates can’t tell the difference becaus…
Those really only exist for certain jobs, like plumbers, carpenters, electricians and machinists. I'm not knocking any of those positions - my parents and grandparents are/were machinists - but if you want to be an engineer or scientist, a college degree is required unless you want your resume to go straight to the shredder, or you're taking advantage of having friends and/or family in high positions (i.e. nepotism).
The fact that useful skills are usually only acquired during employment/internship is true. It doesn't change the fact that most can't get employment in the first place without a degree, and internships don't pay the bills.
In addition, since the civil war, colleges in the US have generally been far more focused on utilitarian skills, rather than the humanities. Sure, there were plenty of art colleges still, but there were far more agricultural schools.
I think this is generally a good thing. I believe there are really two positive things that can come out of going to college - either you get a name-brand degree that opens doors and gets your resume looked at, or you get useful skills that enable you to go down a particular career path (e.g. CS degree). Obviously in some cases it'll be both. The reality is it's really tough to make any case that a humanities degree…
"from a lower or even mid-tier college is a worthwhile investment " I always found this idea amazing, we just accept that univerities are not really there for education but instead a giant sorting machine to separate plebs from (rich/talented/dilligent/take your pick). They don't work like a normal market, there best company grows their production, and supplies millions with the best goods. Oxford/Harvard take their…
This is exactly how high-end luxury good markets work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
TBF you can learn how MOSFETs and compilers work on your own too, you don't need college courses for those either. A higher education degree is a package deal and isn't necessarily intended to be a vocational training course, for better or for worse.
But of course businesses do treat it as a vocational course if they gatekeeper based on that degree. The actual value on the job is different than in the interview room, a fact that perpetuates inequality. I’m a counterpoint in that I’ve no degree but have done well, but I can’t find myself recommending self learning because the barrier to initial entry to industry is so high.
Many benefits are difficult to quantify, but still measurable during an interview: presentation skills, discussions of how you overcome obstacles, demonstrable research into the hiring organization, insightful questions you ask, active listening skills, collaboration skills articulated through example and past experience, etc.
If an interview is exclusively writing code on a whiteboard, that says a lot of what will be asked of you during the job. Good fit for some, poor fit for others.
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Requiring a 4 year degree for a job even if the major isn’t relevant doesn’t seem wrong to me. Maybe data entry is taking it too far? Maybe the data was really sensitive and complicated.
If the knowledge is not required for the job, what is the degree for? Is it a concealed/outsourced IQ test? Is it a concealed illegal minimum age requirement? Isit collective insanity? I dare you to provide an explanation that is not illegal and/or deranged.
One is employees who are deeply in debt can be more easily abused than, for example, wealthy skilled tradesmen. You can do all kinds of things to woman with a student loan debt larger than a mortgage and she'll have to put up with it, whereas a journeyman electrician, in addition to being paid more, would simply move to a competing jobsite the next day.
The other reason is colleges highly promote diversity in freshmen accepted class statistics but always cover up graduating diploma holder statistics. You can kind of legally/illegally guarantee you hire a white woman or certainly tilt the odds against PoC, by demanding the office receptionist hold a bachelors degree in something "to maintain office culture because everyone else in the office went to college and we wouldn't want her to feel left out". Presumably those type of places where PoC need not apply, will soon require their janitors to have a four year degree in some sort of liberal art...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> why are all degrees four years? Most people take the required hours over 4 years, but you certainly don't have to (you do have to plan since some classes are only offered at certain times). When I was in college I went year round so I could have a more even schedule and worked nearly full time. My wife did her undergrad in ~2.5 years after she got out the Army. She didn't go for the 'college experience', and just w…
I think the parent post refers to all of the different majors taking the same time.
I think this is generally a good thing. I believe there are really two positive things that can come out of going to college - either you get a name-brand degree that opens doors and gets your resume looked at, or you get useful skills that enable you to go down a particular career path (e.g. CS degree). Obviously in some cases it'll be both. The reality is it's really tough to make any case that a humanities degree…
"from a lower or even mid-tier college is a worthwhile investment " I always found this idea amazing, we just accept that univerities are not really there for education but instead a giant sorting machine to separate plebs from (rich/talented/dilligent/take your pick). They don't work like a normal market, there best company grows their production, and supplies millions with the best goods. Oxford/Harvard take their…
Unless you recognize that human ability is not equally distributed. In which case colleges need to be exclusionary to maintain prestige. And that prestige is an important signal in a universe where success is dependent on competence.
Conversely, when prestige signals are eroded, there are gradual, self-reinforcing downstream effects, wherein all of our institutions - industry, media, government, academia - are gradually populated with cohorts of reduced competence, and society at large becomes less capable of recognizing merit, particularly given that when once clear signals like alma mater are no longer accurate, laypeople are more drawn to the nonsensical belief that all humans are equally capable.
And slowly the withering of these institutions, and recognition of/appreciation for competence, lead to a withering of society and, I think, this phenomenon is one of the drivers behind the ongoing collapse of the American Empire, for better or worse. The intent behind lowering standards for entry is amiable but based on a faulty and ultimately dangerous assumption.