Posted on 07/22/2014 4:30:55 AM PDT by LeoMcNeil
> Yet, a few years later, you look around and see it being
> embraced everywhere.
See comment 10. Apparently it’s already happening.
They have already been doing that since the 1970s.
Ever wonder why we have never seen Obama’s college grades? Probably because most of them are ‘AA’.
Well, so far, not at the college where I teach.
Of course, employers will adapt. In computer science, many employers are increasingly not looking at college transcripts. Instead, they are looking at what you’ve actually done (programs, web sites, Iphone/Android apps, work on open source projects, etc).
Let’s call this economics professor what he really is - LAZY!
Think about it.
After the class shows up on the first day he can sit down and score every pop quiz, test, and final grade based on the racial quota grading scale. In fact, he could probably do away with quizzes and testing in any form since those results would be immaterial to the final grade.
Carried to its logical extreme - why have colleges at all?
Just issue everyone their PhD immediately after they receive their “I attended school” for 12 years certificate.
BTW - my end all argument against things like this is - would you want your child/grandchild operated on by a surgeon who got his grades, and medical degrees, based on racial/sexual quotas?
As the parent of a high school student, I become ever more convinced that with the exception of a few scientific or technical fields, a 4-year college education just makes one stupider.
I don’t buy for a minute the idea that suffering an intensive course of idiotic left-wing indoctrination while going tens of thousands of dollars into debt increases one’s earning capacity.
Maybe a 4-year college degree once had value, but I believe those days are past. I have two 4-year college degrees that I got in the 1970s, and I honestly can’t say that they have contributed to the value proposition that I have brought to the business of making a living over the past 35 years.
I’m not saying that education is unimportant. I’m saying that for the most part, the 4-year college experience no longer delivers an education.
> Instead, they are looking at what you’ve actually done
> (programs, web sites, Iphone/Android apps, work on open
> source projects, etc).
Which is why I tell everybody I know that’s interested in software as a career to get invovled with open source projects. Pick a project you like in an area of software development that interests you, look at the outstanding bugs and feature requests, pick one of those that interests you, and FIX or IMPLEMENT IT! Rinse and repeat.
Soon, you become a known entity among the project’s cognoscenti users, and you have real life accomplishments to present to prospective employers. It’s even possible that they will come looking for you.
You are 100% correct. I have gone back to finish up my degree after a long hiatus and am astounded by how prevalent that message is across all disciplines. Accounting, finance, management, business law all have the same message "White man bad" and the urgent need for "sustainability".
I am old enough to know this message is garbage, but to a young impressionable mind is a different story.
I suspect it will be the latter.
I worked for 35 years in high tech and have two experiences involving race that stick in my mind. I had a black employee that should have been fired. Details are not important but not only was this person a bad worker, he was a bad person. Anyway, HR freaked at the prospect of having to fire a black person. It took months and months to gather the documentation, witnesses accounts, events, dates/times etc. And after all that, all I was able to do was arrange a transfer for this person to another Dept. where he was put in the corner and nobody expected anything from him. It was not right.
The second case involved the summer intern program. Historically, the program hired the best Junior college engineers and scientists from the best universities in the nation; MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech, etc. These kids were brilliant. I always had some back burner project that they could take on. They understood the scientific method, design, fabrication, instrumentation, data analysis and presentation. Some of them even walked out with a patent applicaiton at the end of the summer.
Now the problem: HR decided that the Summer Intren Program was now going to be an affirmative action program. I applied to get one of them as I usually did for the Summer Interns. It was a disaster. They knew nothing. Did not want to learn anything. Would not take direction or advice. And often would not come to work. I gave it two years and gave up. Never put in for one again.
Bingo! This part can't be emphasized enough. That is probably the biggest payoff in working open source--getting the good contacts. Plus, if you work for a proprietary software company, there is a very good chance you may not even be able to show your contribution to a potential employer. On the flip side, I've always thought that OSS projects were a little Marxist. I've seen a few software companies that tried to compete with them--its not pretty.
> I’ve always thought that OSS projects were a little Marxist.
They tend to be more Libertarian-anarchic. :)
I’ve been working with OSS for years. Yeah, there are some Marxists, but there are some REAL Constitutinal Conservatives walking heavy. :)
Most folks avoid talking politics in this environment, because we all realize we ain’t gonna convince one another. People change their worldview, indeed, but usually due to changes in circumstances, or in personal revelaton, or even in faith.
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