The original idea behind school isn’t to educate the masses. Why would a factory worker need to know calculus and Shakespeare? He needs to read the clock and timetables, be on time, wake up in the morning early enough to be punctual, …
Likewise higher education isn’t about the thinks you learn. It is about learning methods to learn. If you can learn the nitrogen cycle, you can learn our scrum statuses. If you can hand in your homework in time, you can keep our deadlines.
This isn’t to say the system is good, but it helps to understand it when you want to criticize it.
But learning to critically question statements and judging them yourself (which requires some knowledge, for example you can’t question anti-vaxxers when you don’t know anything about how vaccines work) instead of simply believing them is extremely important in a democracy.
There’s ample evidence to show that no one learns critical thinking in college. At best, you select for people who are better at it.
Judging sources for the information requires way less knowledge. To continue your analogy, for most people it’s obvious to take your medical advice from your family doctor instead of that crazy aunt in Facebook
While you’d generally believe that to be true it can be hard for people with no knowledge who aren’t the brightest to see through statements like “doctors just are part of the wealthy smart people society who aim to keep us down”.
Never underestimate human stupidity.
The problem is when medicine is for profit, you really do end up with that feeling when doctors are rushed to get you out of the door because they need to see ten patients an hour. When you’re the product it’s harder to build that trust.
It was probably better before when family doctors actually had a relationship with your family.
The original idea behind school isn’t to educate the masses. Why would a factory worker need to know calculus and Shakespeare? He needs to read the clock and timetables, be on time, wake up in the morning early enough to be punctual, …
In certain country reading clock and timetables was deemed not enough for factory worker.
Ah, Elementary through Highschool teaches you to be an employee.
Higher education is being sold dreams and taking on debt to learn to be a better employee. Sounds about right.
I teach myself new complex skills all the time, but I imagine I’m still written off a ton because I didn’t pay for at least the four year license to learn to learn. Lol
(I want to emphasize I’m being playfully sarcastic about our clown world society and not attacking you, you are very correct about needing to understand before one critiques!)
Okay but at that point high school has proven that.
Cant you find out the answer for these questions with a series of short tests?
I once applied for a job at IBM and instead of an initial interview they sent me a series of interactive tests to check my skills. I ended up moving to another country and didn’t follow through, but still liked this approach.
Also in the EU I can see lots of job listings are using now a system where you either have a certain type of education/degree or a certain previous experience to be eligible to apply.
Still you need to have knowledge of the specific field, but technically if you started at the bottom with an entry level low skill job you can get higher with experience alone and without a university degree.
A college degree ahows you can complete a series of seemingly-unrelated tasks (courses) across multiple phases (semesters), to finish a major project (degree).
It means you finish what you start and have an eye on the future instead of the present.
Your answer sounds like it was lifted from a LinkedIn motivational post.
College favours the rich, who can afford it and I don’t think people with higher education are better at planning their future.
Lots of people are forced through college by their parents, often backed up with money and safety nets of security - if they fail the first time they just throw more money at it and try again.
A lack of a degree isn’t proof of anything, good or bad (for most jobs).
But a degree is a positive indicator.
The reality is that when hiring an employee I don’t care how privileged they are. I care about whether they’re going to be a good fit for the position.
There are other things people can use to demonstrate their ability to be a good employee. If someone worked for a company for multiple years and was promoted during that time it’s a good indicator.
If someone is 23 and has worked for 10 different companies, I’m gonna guess they’re flaky.
However, if someone worked for the same company more than once that’s a good sign, because after leaving the company wanted them back.
But, all else being equal, having a degree is better than not for a skilled position, and will usually demand more money.
Can they? Yes. Absolutely. 100%.
A local factory likes people with college degrees, any degree, no matter what college or course, but also offer tests twice a year in large groups for exactly the reason that plenty y of people are qualified, and can do everything they need, but never went to college.
Will they? Probably not unless it’s a niche employer. Why bother going through the extra effort when you can just say “degrees only” and turn your nose up at anyone without one?
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I had terrible imposter syndrome when I landed a sw dev job. I thought everyone could tell that I didn’t belong. I was / am self-taught. Everyone had CS degrees. I thought I was a fraud. I later recalibrated to realize that I’d earned it even harder without a degree. But I had to get that spot to be able to leverage my knowledge. There are probably people who know a lot more than me getting rejected because they don’t have the right credentials.
CS degrees, at least in my experience, prep you for a bunch of things that honestly don’t matter too much. Like, I don’t think knowing what P versus NP means really helps me at my job. I think learning to use build tools and frameworks rather than just the language itself would’ve been more useful.
The best professor I had in that regard at college was younger and also working at a “real” company while also teaching (I believe he was getting a master’s degree). He taught us about Spring and Maven and had us make a REST API. The only downside is that this course was about making GUIs and the majority of it was about Swing which nobody really uses. I have a feeling he added the other assignment because it was.more relevant to things most folks do with Java.
It’s because computer science degrees aren’t really programming degrees.
A computer science degree sets you up to be a scientist, most common dev jobs are just glorified Lego sets patching libraries together and constructing queries. There is skill, knowledge, and effort in those jobs, but they are fundamentally different.
Most common software dev jobs are closer to the end user than not.
25 years after graduation in CS I’m still waiting for the Pumping Lemma to have any relevance to my work as a dev.
Get a job in scientific computing then
Even stuff like simulation engines can make a grown man cry
Its not about learning, its about paying your dues to the church of capitalism
For the US, id certainly agree with you. College is free here and some employers require it (less and less though). A coworker once told me a degree shows you can be serious for one thing and see it through. It shows you are capable of achieving a goal.
I believe your coworker is right to some extent. Getting a degree is a lot of work. It demonstrates your ability to do work and get things done… Among other things.
Having any degree/post secondary diploma, generally says you have the ability to work on something without being forced into it. IMO, HS is generally expected and more or less forced on everyone, so it doesn’t really count.
While I believe that’s the motivation behind needing a degree to get a job, I also, personally, don’t agree with it. There’s plenty of hardworking people who never even considered college/uni after HS. Some of them are much more motivated and hardworking than the people I knew from my time in college.
I work in IT, and see degree requirements on all sorts of job postings. It’s bullshit, since there’s haven’t been IT centric degrees until very recently, outside of CS/development. Most of these jobs don’t require any programming whatsoever. They’ll be for helpdesk, system administration, networking, etc. Programming knowhow might help but it’s definitely not required. I don’t need Java, or C++, or Python, or any other language to know how to click buttons on dialogs in Windows.
that’s still such an ableist take. (as someone in the usa)
Employers are inherently ableist. They discriminate against people who are unable to do the job. They also discriminate for reasons unrelated to job performance, but then measuring job performance is very difficult even when someone has been working at a company for years.
Note that in professional sports and in Hollywood it’s quite easy to measure performance. Accordingly, you see athletes and actors compensated in a way that’s much more in line with their job performance than other industries.
Don’t think I’ve ever actually heard a company say “forget everything you learned in college”.
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You don’t work where I work then.
Family-owned business. Realizes they’re behind-the-ball on technology and practices. Hires college-educated & outside people to make suggestions.
“Well none of that makes sense to us. Forget all that and do it our way.”
“That way is wrong.”
“Well it’s our business, we’ll do it how we want.”
Then they get all <surprised pikachu> when the talented people get burnt out and quit after a few weeks. Eventually it’s “well these kids just don’t want to work hard like we do.”
We need to figure out college in the US. There’s way too much dead weight meant to justify tuition in most programs. I’m sorry but I don’t need to know how to write research papers to do half the fields taught in college. Dropping that dead weight would make college far more attainable for so many people.
If we can’t stop businesses from requiring degrees, and we can’t, then we need a hard look at what’s in a degree.
Also, the government needs to back off requiring degrees for so much stuff too. For example they want a degree to tell people nearing retirement age what their options are and to do the paperwork. I’m sorry but that’s not what college is about. Unless there’s a technical need that cannot be fulfilled with certifications or practical tests, (code a coffee machine for me, and build the stack), it should not require a degree.
Going by job listings you’d think literally everyone other than construction, military, retail, food, and security, has a degree.
