I found that college fails to live up to being “The Great Equalizer” • Hacker News Board

Re: I found that college fails to live up to being “The Great Equalizer”

#61

Post by graecea » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

voakbasda wrote: post #57

graecea wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand most people in the 50/60s would also fail the brevet (or baccalaureat for that matter). I can't speak for the math level but I do know that school in the 60s required you to learn every single prefecture and chef-lieu by heart in geography classes, and the name of every single bone and organ in biology classes. Sometimes modern reforms aren't all that bad.

You say that like it’s a bad thing. More people should fail. We as a civilization deserve higher standards than what can be achieved by the average student.

I never implied that, in fact I'm pretty noncommittal on the matter and would do away with the baccalaureat (or maturite, or whatever) entirely.

60 years ago a test was hard and most people failed it. Today it's easy and most people pass it. What's the difference? Why even have a test? Since we're somehow talking about French-speaking countries, Belgium doesn't have such a test and isn't worse off for it.

Re: I found that college fails to live up to being “The Great Equalizer”

#62

Post by sokoloff » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

jimnotgym wrote: post #36

sokoloff wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is university meant to be vocational training or learning the unchanging fundamentals and how to learn new things in the field? I think it serves a better purpose to teach the underlying fundamentals and not to do vocational training. I don't think it's a serious flaw that you can graduate from a top university with a CS degree without ever having written SQL, react, or used revision control. To me, those are vocatio…

You may be right, but then shouldn't the standard route for most developers be vocational rather than academic? How many developers do we need in the workforce with this academic background?

Most of what we do doesn't require a CS degree. Among the best devs/IT workers I've worked with, non-degree holders are over-represented. I don't have a CS degree (I have a Mech E degree).

Nonetheless, if a company has got a load of not-difficult programming that it needs done, they're probably still going (and will be well-served) to hire someone with a college degree. Why? Because completing a degree shows you can follow directions, are basically compliant to a framework of rules, can doggedly pursue something over multiple years when the payoff isn't obviously tied to each day's effort. It's not needed, but it's also not insane to think that companies prefer college grads.

Re: I found that college fails to live up to being “The Great Equalizer”

#63

Post by hogFeast » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

dvt wrote: post #33

> who you know than what you know Yeah, the world is a social place. There's a reason European royalty sent their kids to etiquette classes, and even these days fraternities and sororities have formals. That's how the world works. Someone that's surprised by this in their 20s or 30s was failed by their parents or immediate community and this has nothing to do with college. You need to be nice to people, you need to b…

I don't think it is only about being personable. That is obviously very important but it is as much about being able to insert yourself into someone else's life and help them. You meet someone, they have a problem, and you can say: "Oh, I know X or Y". That is very big, being a connector to lots of people with skills is the same as having those skills yourself.

But I agree totally. Most of my family worked in the public sector, I had no idea about any of this stuff until I started trying to get a job. And some of the people who I grew up with who were totally incompetent but were sociable/well-connected ended up doing very well (I went to a private school, so my sample is quite interesting: I know a guy who was very smart, went to college, trained in law at the top law school in my country, worked hard, but couldn't get it together ended up becoming a chef...meanwhile a guy who got straight Ds, scraped into uni, did no work whilst there is working as a PM at a top fund manager...they don't teach you this part of life in school).

On the OP: college isn't real life, it isn't anything like real life at all because you don't need to be an expert or have knowledge to extract economic value (and that isn't a bad thing at all). As someone who went to private school and saw a decent amount of privilege, it didn't helped kids who came from poorer backgrounds. These kids went to college (which probably would have happened anyway, they are smart) but most (not all tbf) struggled in the real world because they had poor social skills. I have a long list of utterly mediocre human beings who are punching well above their weight in life (and tbf, this is a bad thing...the guy I mention above shouldn't be managing anyone else's money...not to be harsh, he just shouldn't), and a list of one or two people who came from a poorer background and got out. I think that is down to a combination of socialization, understanding business, and nepotism (I wouldn't overestimate the latter, all of the people who punch above their weight had the ability to walk into a room and make another person feel like they had known them forever).

Re: I found that college fails to live up to being “The Great Equalizer”

#64

Post by giantg2 » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

graecea wrote: post #56

dvt wrote: post #33

> who you know than what you know Yeah, the world is a social place. There's a reason European royalty sent their kids to etiquette classes, and even these days fraternities and sororities have formals. That's how the world works. Someone that's surprised by this in their 20s or 30s was failed by their parents or immediate community and this has nothing to do with college. You need to be nice to people, you need to b…

The problem is that we're being sold the 'meritocracy' narrative in the academical and technical circles. You often see it in HN discussions about hiring decisions (reasoning involving the "top 1% programmers" without any indication as to what that means exactly). If you have the introverted, dilligent, keeping-your-head-down, got-high-marks-at-school mentality that I assume is prevalent on HN, it can come as a shock…

Yep, I would be much further along and better off if I just played the game.

Re: I found that college fails to live up to being “The Great Equalizer”

#65

Post by rowanG077 » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

graecea wrote: post #56

dvt wrote: post #33

> who you know than what you know Yeah, the world is a social place. There's a reason European royalty sent their kids to etiquette classes, and even these days fraternities and sororities have formals. That's how the world works. Someone that's surprised by this in their 20s or 30s was failed by their parents or immediate community and this has nothing to do with college. You need to be nice to people, you need to b…

The problem is that we're being sold the 'meritocracy' narrative in the academical and technical circles. You often see it in HN discussions about hiring decisions (reasoning involving the "top 1% programmers" without any indication as to what that means exactly). If you have the introverted, dilligent, keeping-your-head-down, got-high-marks-at-school mentality that I assume is prevalent on HN, it can come as a shock…

Or you simply view being sociable as part of Merit. In fact I'd wager that to do well in almost any job you need to be sociable. Merit is not just about technical ability.

Re: I found that college fails to live up to being “The Great Equalizer”

#66

Post by visaals » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

bluefirebrand wrote: post #53

wayoutthere wrote: post #13

Yeah, there’s a big difference between “kid with a CS degree” and “kid who interned at Microsoft for 3 summers and knows industry dev practices well”. This is why internships matter; it doesn’t even have to be a well-known company as long as it teaches you how to work on a dev team (git, agile workflow, DevOps, cloud, etc). In my experience it’s the tools and tech around working as more than a singleton. That’s the j…

I was the "kid with a CS degree". My experience interning was "There actually aren't many tech companies in your city and it's 2008 so no one is hiring" I was a broke student so I couldn't exactly afford to relocate for a summer internship, lose my apartment, store all of my belongings and such. I started my career with basically no experience, spent my last money on a deposit and first months rent to relocate to a n…

Dang that's a tough road to persevere through especially in '08. How did you get your big break?

Re: I found that college fails to live up to being “The Great Equalizer”

#67

Post by gumby » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

voakbasda wrote: post #57

graecea wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand most people in the 50/60s would also fail the brevet (or baccalaureat for that matter). I can't speak for the math level but I do know that school in the 60s required you to learn every single prefecture and chef-lieu by heart in geography classes, and the name of every single bone and organ in biology classes. Sometimes modern reforms aren't all that bad.

You say that like it’s a bad thing. More people should fail. We as a civilization deserve higher standards than what can be achieved by the average student.

They are failing, it’s just happening later (when they try to get a job).

Clearly things are broken.

Re: I found that college fails to live up to being “The Great Equalizer”

#68

Post by gumby » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #7

xwolfi wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be down just because you met one guy - who knows, maybe he cant work a week without insulting a client. Dont forget that when colleges didnt exist for everyone, say 200 years ago, most people were farmers. People are selective when it comes to timeframe, but it's just a mean regression - some periods reach peak, some get back lower, but all in all, we're trending up.

Farming is arguably more complicated and requires more domain knowledge than most service jobs today.

Most farmers in wealthy countries today have Ag Ec degrees and are spreadsheet jockeys, whether they want to be (many do) or not.

Re: I found that college fails to live up to being “The Great Equalizer”

#69

Post by visaals » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #15

visaals wrote: post #2

After the experience of meeting the Uber driver with an degree in actuarial science unable to apply his education it shattered my rose colored glasses about how education today is "The Great Equalizer" and the solution to all of our problems. I wanted to share these thoughts to discuss any cool ideas to bridge the gap between an education and effectively increasing opportunity for people as automation take away more…

I enjoyed your writing. It looks like you haven't written much since; life get in the way? Readership low? etc?

Wow that's the first time someone has said that (other than my immediate friends and family lol), so thank you!

Mind if I ask what in particular you liked? I am interested about certain topics like education + improving access to opportunity + building cool stuff with tech + thinking about economic systems and incentives to drive success, but I also don't to come off as someone who just yells into the void about my opinions.

Re: I found that college fails to live up to being “The Great Equalizer”

#70

Post by graecea » Sun, Dec 19, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

rowanG077 wrote: post #65

graecea wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that we're being sold the 'meritocracy' narrative in the academical and technical circles. You often see it in HN discussions about hiring decisions (reasoning involving the "top 1% programmers" without any indication as to what that means exactly). If you have the introverted, dilligent, keeping-your-head-down, got-high-marks-at-school mentality that I assume is prevalent on HN, it can come as a shock…

Or you simply view being sociable as part of Merit. In fact I'd wager that to do well in almost any job you need to be sociable. Merit is not just about technical ability.

That's just an attempt to salvage meritocracy. The problem is that there is no single metric one could rigorously construct that encapsulates everything one needs for success, partly because 'success' isn't well-defined (there's no such thing as 'winning', remember?) and partly because even if such a metric were constructed it would rapidly become obsolete as one's personality and genreal society evolve.

In more technical terms, some spaces just aren't metrizable ;)