Posted on 08/13/2008 6:42:34 AM PDT by shrinkermd
Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch. One of your colleagues submits this proposal:
First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn't meet the goal. We will call the goal a "BA."
You would conclude that your colleague was cruel, not to say insane. But that's the system we have in place.
Finding a better way should be easy. The BA acquired its current inflated status by accident. Advanced skills for people with brains really did get more valuable over the course of the 20th century, but the acquisition of those skills got conflated with the existing system of colleges, which had evolved the BA for completely different purposes.
Outside a handful of majors -- engineering and some of the sciences -- a bachelor's degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance. Even a degree in a vocational major like business administration can mean anything from a solid base of knowledge to four years of barely remembered gut courses
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I agree with you 100 percent. Some where along the way, a college education got confused with vocational training. Now, a bachelor’s degree is largely worthless and a master’s is a baseline requirement for advancement. Soon, the Ph.D. will be standard issue for employment in most white collar fields.
Oh, it's not so difficult.
Dumbing down.
See?
If a bachelor degree tells an employer nothing then it would not tell them that they have "a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance." Perhaps a better sentence would be: "...a bachelor's degree tells an employer ONLY that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance."
College degrees increase the number of doors of opportunity that you can knock on. But you must take responsibility for knocking on those extra doors of opportunity.
I’ve never been to college. That’s not something I’m necessarily proud of, but neither am I ashamed. My lack of sheepskin does disqualify me from any decent government job, and that’s not a bad thing. But, I can say that I’ve never been turned down for a job and I’ve never been unemployed.
Now your talking! (It also includes basketball games, go KU!)
“Its not about the education. It is about the perseverance.”
One might select a college and cirriculum where it’s about the education AND the perseverance.
Anyway, college is not trade school. I never thought it was. I think there is value in general education.
You make a great argument for closing down colleges and the Mexican border and having young people take the jobs illegal immigrants are now doing.
The only really important people to encourage are those that create the new technologies that change our lives. People like Thomas Edison who did the light bulb, phonograph, movie projector and lots of other stuff. People like Henry Ford who developed the assembly line. How about Orvile and Wilber Wright who did the airplane or Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates who did the PC computer and PC software.
What do these people who really changed our world and created huge industries have in common? None of them have anything other than honorary college degrees. Colleges don't teach courses in how to do what has never been done. And that is the one group of peope we need. People who can figure out how to do what has never been done.
That takes rebels who reject the college plan to produce well rounded students taught to do things the professors way.
The USA has no trouble producing rebels. It is nations like China and India that have trouble producing rebels.
Making Windows VISTA much worse than Windows XP is something those programmers from India do very well.
Bill Gates could not get hired at Microsoft.. he does not have a degree. And those that could create a fantastic new version of Windows can't get hired by Microsoft either.
I really disagree. When I was an econ major, I couldn't understand why I had to take four semesters of English courses, which included everything from composition to literature. The same was true for a course called "The Arts" (a study of art, architecture, sculpture, etc. from Roman times to the present) and "World Civilization". Now, I have an appreciation for things I never dreamed would matter 40 years ago. Several trips to Europe were significantly enhanced because of "The Arts", although I didn't appreciate it one bit while going through it. I've written a number of textbooks; a task made significantly easier because of those stupid English courses.
Certification is fine from the employer's point of view in terms of assessing technical competency. However, technical schools catch on quickly and "teach the exam" far too often. The result is a narrowly-defined education that often makes it difficult for them to think "outside the box". Which is better for an employer: someone who knows programming techniques independent of the language, or one who scores well on a programming language test? It depends. If you want that programmer on staff in the long run, they need to be able to adapt to changes in technology ( e.g., languages, op systems, etc.) If you are only hiring for the short run (e.g., a one year contract), the certification route might be best.
This author's one-size-fits-all for certification is too simple to meet the goals of all employers.
$125,000? Yipes!
I graduated with a BSc Computer Science in the late 1990s. It cost me $1500-$2000 per semester including books. Total cost for 4 years about $12,000-$16,000 dollars. I went to UofH main campus in Houston, TX.
Most relevant college-level bodies of knowledge can be made available free over the Internet - study on your own time, pass the exams, and you get the degree.
And some corporations, like the one I worked for 21 years and retired from, offer tuition reimbursement for employees. Yes, it can be difficult, working full-time and getting a degree, but a lot of us have done it.
I heartily recommended it to a lot of the younger employees - let the company pay your tuition and books, and do it NOW while you're young. Don't wait until you're married with kids and all the responsibilities that come with it.
I have had three corporation jobs in my past. I was replaced in those jobs by people with college degrees. They were paid more than I, and after a short period of time those same companies came to me begging me to return. My replacements could not do the job I did in twice the amount of time. It was too hard and they didn’t want to put in the time needed to get the job done. In my world of the real workplace, my statement stands.
“The only really important people to encourage are those that create the new technologies that change our lives.”
I’d like to register my disagreement with that one.
Technology is great, and cool too, and sometimes useful. But it is not the only important thing.
Good stuff here.
Excerpt:
“But when so many of the players would benefit, a market opportunity exists. If a high-profile testing company such as the Educational Testing Service were to reach a strategic decision to create definitive certification tests, it could coordinate with major employers, professional groups and nontraditional universities to make its tests the gold standard. A handful of key decisions could produce a tipping effect. Imagine if Microsoft announced it would henceforth require scores on a certain battery of certification tests from all of its programming applicants. Scores on that battery would acquire instant credibility for programming job applicants throughout the industry.”
Yes that's the same advice we gave to our son, that just joined the Navy.
I guessed as much. Too bad your personal experiences lead you to your bias' against college grads. I won't try to change your POV but you should realize that there are many occupations where one would be lost without a college degree.
A Bachelor of Arts degree in the Sciences will land you a job as a engineering technician.
A Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering will land you a job as an engineer, with an earning potential that is 30-100% higher than the technician.
A BS degree still has some merits. However, I’ve seen the quality of the BS Engineering degree degrade. A new 2008 Masters degree in engineering is about equivalent to a new 1978 Bachelor degree in engineering.
Excellent post.
I just shake my head in bewilderment every time I see one of these types of stories that proclaim college as being a waste of time and money and totally unnecessary. It’s all a bunch of crap.
If you earn a college degree it proves to potential employers that you can:
meet deadlines
work on multiple projects
engage in critical thinking
successfully reach long term goals
work effectively with others
coherently present facts from numerous different sources
properly prioritize assignments
The list goes on. Like you said, these skills and abilities are pretty important in the rapidly changing world we live in today.
“It teaches kids who have grown beyond the socialist public schools system “
Colleges ARE a socialist school system.
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