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His conjecture is correct, but his conclusion is not. Advanced mathematics are rarely used for any professional position (including software engineering), but

His conjecture is correct, but his conclusion is not. Advanced mathematics are rarely used for any professional position (including software engineering), but that doesn't mean that technical degrees are irrelevant. In my experience, such filters (like an MIT degree in CS) are invaluable for two reasons: 1. Math does teach you to think logically, which is an invaluable skill in all careers and essential in some (software engineering, specifically). He claims that "transference of mathematical skills is unsettled," but in my experience that's totally untrue: try teaching programming to a bunch of math majors and a bunch of sociology majors, see how learns more easily. Of course, math is definitely not the only way to learn this—philosophy is also an excellent way to learn logical thinking, and I wish that more CS departments required some basic philosophy courses. That being said, what would be a better way to teach logic skills directly? The sports analogy is pretty bogus because athletes typically spend the majority of their time practicing things besides full games of their sport. 2. For almost any professional field, having smarter employees is an advantage. Unfortunately, administering and/or requiring IQ tests is cumbersome and potentially illegal. A technical degree from a top university is a convenient proxy.

pjscott 10y ago
> [...] try teaching programming to a bunch of math majors and a bunch of sociology majors, see how learns more easily. That doesn't necessarily mean that teaching math to people makes them better at programming. It could also mean that the kind of people who major in math (and then don't drop out in the first year) tend to be better at the kind of thinking used in programming than people who go into sociology. It's hard to tell what causes what, and that's what the author is talking about when he says that the matter of skill transfer isn't settled.
Camillo 10y ago
#2 is spot on. That is also why going to university no longer guarantees a "good job". A degree used to be a pretty decent proxy for intellectual talent. For many degrees, that was actually most of the value to potential employers, rather than the specific skills learned. You could get an English degree and get a job in an unrelated field not because your English education made you particularly valuable as an employee, but because the fact that you had made it through college was proof of the value that you had to begin with. But now, since more and more people are pushed towards college, the value of a degree as a proxy for talent has been debased. On top of that, there happens to be some correlation between the actual economic value of the skills taught in a degree and its power as a proxy for intellectual talent. For example, a degree in engineering teaches economically useful skills, and is also less accessible to those of middling intelligence. But a degree in English, on top of teaching skills of little economic utility, also lacks a strong filter for intelligence. So more of its value was in its role as a proxy, and it took a bigger hit to it. And that is why you see so many people with English degrees working as baristas. But the key point is that those are mostly people who would have been baristas anyway. The magical feather was fake; the employability, or lack thereof, was within them all along.

pjscott 10y ago

> [...] try teaching programming to a bunch of math majors and a bunch of sociology majors, see how learns more easily. That doesn't necessarily mean that teaching math to people makes them better at programming. It could also mean that the kind of people who major in math (and then don't drop out in the first year) tend to be better at the kind of thinking used in programming than people who go into sociology. It's hard to tell what causes what, and that's what the author is talking about when he says that the matter of skill transfer isn't settled.

Camillo 10y ago

#2 is spot on. That is also why going to university no longer guarantees a "good job". A degree used to be a pretty decent proxy for intellectual talent. For many degrees, that was actually most of the value to potential employers, rather than the specific skills learned. You could get an English degree and get a job in an unrelated field not because your English education made you particularly valuable as an employee, but because the fact that you had made it through college was proof of the value that you had to begin with. But now, since more and more people are pushed towards college, the value of a degree as a proxy for talent has been debased. On top of that, there happens to be some correlation between the actual economic value of the skills taught in a degree and its power as a proxy for intellectual talent. For example, a degree in engineering teaches economically useful skills, and is also less accessible to those of middling intelligence. But a degree in English, on top of teaching skills of little economic utility, also lacks a strong filter for intelligence. So more of its value was in its role as a proxy, and it took a bigger hit to it. And that is why you see so many people with English degrees working as baristas. But the key point is that those are mostly people who would have been baristas anyway. The magical feather was fake; the employability, or lack thereof, was within them all along.