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Education is an expensive burden on the society that have not proven to worth its value in terms of Return Over Investment. Funnily, the only persons asserting

by SFJulie 10y ago

Education is an expensive burden on the society that have not proven to worth its value in terms of Return Over Investment. Funnily, the only persons asserting the value of diploma ... are PhD in ivy league business schools... selling expensive diplomas... Education is probably a large scale scam in its actual form: too long, too expensive, counter-productive and overrated. Cf Henri Mintzberg essay on why MBA for instance are a poor choice for being innovative. "M.B.A. programs train the wrong people in the wrong ways with the wrong consequences," said Henry Mintzberg, a management professor at McGill University in Montreal. "You can't create a manager in a classroom. If you give people who aren't managers the impression that you turned them into one, you've created hubris."

Lordarminius 10y ago
> Education is an expensive burden on the society that have not proven to worth its value in terms of Return Over Investment. As a person from a region of the world with a high level of illiteracy an having witnessed firsthand the ROI of an uneducated citizenry, I would question this assertion
- prodmerc 10y ago
  I honestly can't understand how people spout some of this crap. I've also grown up in a region where education was overlooked, and living with complete fucking morons is not fun. Especially when these morons themselves think that education is worthless, which is a snowball effect meaning many of their children will be stupid, as well. On the other hand, it's easier to control them if you want to. Like they did in Medieval ages and earlier. Yeah, let's go back to that. The ROI is as indirect and long term as it gets, but it's real and it's massive.
  - ttoinou 10y ago
    You have to compare comparables situations : what could have been done different with the same resources involved ? Having an educational system is a sign that the society is wealthy and can afford it, but doesn't mean it's the best use of resources involved (thus it might have a bad ROI). You said education was overlooked where you come from, was there an educational system there ?
- qb45 10y ago
  I think it's a matter of value being shaped by under- or oversupply. Speaking of illiteracy, there's an urban legend (not sure if true, anyone with access to data please check it) that literacy rate has actually dropped in the US throughout the 20th century, coinciding with increase of education "supply".
  - VLM 10y ago
    No data exists for that because the definition of illiteracy depends too strongly on the axe being ground. Everything from 1% to 66% illiteracy has been attempted to sell to people. It does seem that illiteracy clusters with various citizenship status, racial and other demographics, simple age distribution of a geographic location, and socioeconomic level to an extent that if you successfully filter those effects out you end up with a boring flat line at 100% literacy when ends up meaning nothing. The largest factor is literacy graphs and maps are basically a restatement of immigration data.
- randomdata 10y ago
  I believe he is referring to postsecondary education specifically. In North America, K-12 exists to make one a functioning member of society. For what flaws it may have, it has overall shown to be beneficial. With that measured success, we got the idea that once you were a functioning member of society, you could become a functioning member of the workforce simply by continuing in even more years of schooling. But it's not clear if it has really worked out. In 1970, approximately 10% of the US population had a bachelors degree or higher. In 2017, that number is closer to 30%, yet incomes have remained stagnant throughout that entire period and job quality has declined. Not what you'd expect from the promised higher incomes and better jobs that people were willing to spend large amounts of money for.
  - SFJulie 10y ago
    I was indeed referring to post secondary education. If I was no troll, I would admit a soft tooth for Finland focus on early education and the amazing results they have doing so. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/sep/20/grammar-schools-play-europe-top-education-system-finland-daycare https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/sep/20/grammar-sc...
- humanrebar 10y ago
  It's worth distinguishing between basic literacy (including basic math skills) and graduate-level specialty degrees. For one, if the labor market in a particular specialty becomes oversaturated, does that mean existing grads need to spend years retraining?
- Shorel 10y ago
  He is talking about College/University education, and companies sometimes requiring advanced degrees for basic jobs. High school is and will always be needed. Also, for some careers university education is obviously necessary. Just not always. However, this probably only applies to the USA, or other places (South America as well) where students get into high debt to get degrees.
SlySherZ 10y ago
It depends a lot on which parts of education you're talking about. The first 9-12 years are required so that kids have something to do while their parents are at work. Learning stuff and interacting with other people is a nice way to spend their time. From that point, it depends on the subject you decide to study. It seems to me that medicine students get a lot of real life practice during their training, which makes the school almost irreplaceable. In other areas, like programming, you're better of staying at home and watching online lectures and making your own pet projects to learn, as long as you have enough self discipline to keep yourself on track. There are tons of resources you can learn from and you can practice as much as you want. I did it and it has been working well so far. Overall, I wouldn't say we should ditch education at all, but we should seriously rethink the way it works. We can do much better than this.
- humanrebar 10y ago
  > ...you're better of staying at home and watching online lectures and making your own pet projects to learn While I agree that you can get pretty far with self-study on small projects, the most important parts of software engineering revolve around communication, especially with other developers and with expert tools. It's hard to get better at communication without, well, communicating. Of course, one can get a lot of experience by contributing to open source projects or finding other ways to work on group projects.
  - SlySherZ 10y ago
    I completly agree with the need to communicate and program with other people. From my experience, computer science degrees severely lack this communication trainning. You do ~2 small group projects per semester. The group splits the project into parts and everyone goes and does it's own part alone. There is no teamwork, source control, tests nor anything like that. I seriously hope other universities do it differently and I just attended the wrong one.
    - humanrebar 10y ago
      I had team projects, somewhat resembling what you describe. No, I had no source control or testing training at all. I chalk that up to more academic programs being oriented towards computer science and mathematics than craftsmanship, engineering, and project management concerns.
IgorPartola 10y ago
s/education/higher education in liberal arts and business/g. Next time you need surgery, you probably don't want your doctor to have been self taught.
- randomdata 10y ago
  If resources were infinite, I wouldn't have any concern about a self-taught doctor. If they are smart enough to perform surgery, they're smart enough to figure out how to do it. The challenge the real world presents is that the resources needed to reach that level, such as access to specialized equipment, is not in reach of the average person. It's not like a software development career where a widely available personal computer that can be purchased for hundreds – even tens – of dollars pretty much sums up everything you need to become among the best in the world. What the schools have been able to provide is a place where people can pool their resources to gain shared access to infrastructure. Education comes as a natural consequence of effectively utilizing that infrastructure, of course.
  - IgorPartola 10y ago
    Smart does not mean experienced. I don't say this often on HN, but you really have no clue with what you are talking about here.
    - randomdata 10y ago
      Where, exactly, do you think experience comes from? By actually utilizing the aforementioned infrastructure that is not accessible to most people. Nobody becomes a surgeon just by watching a lecture in a classroom. If it were that simple, surgeons really could just watch some Youtube videos. I get the impression you didn't actually stop to take in what I wrote.
- SFJulie 10y ago
  Having a father who was a surgeon (and quite good), I have enough real life feedback to say that apprenticeship/internship in medecine may matter more than the years of theoretical studies that actually are used mostly for selecting the «right persons». Not to say theoretical education worth naught, I say there is a cursor that is way tilted in favour of theory that costs less and make universities earn more. Let's call it a corporatism behaviour. You don't want a surgeon that was good at school, you want a surgeon that when his hospital is poor will use his earning to buy medical reviews to stay up to date, say fuck to the hospital and take unpaid vacations to go in conferences to stay up to date. You want a surgeon that don't care about his diploma, or the titles but stay focused on his craft and will go on learning without caring for what society legally requires him to do in order to practice.

by SFJulie 10y ago

Lordarminius 10y ago

> Education is an expensive burden on the society that have not proven to worth its value in terms of Return Over Investment. As a person from a region of the world with a high level of illiteracy an having witnessed firsthand the ROI of an uneducated citizenry, I would question this assertion

prodmerc 10y ago
I honestly can't understand how people spout some of this crap. I've also grown up in a region where education was overlooked, and living with complete fucking morons is not fun. Especially when these morons themselves think that education is worthless, which is a snowball effect meaning many of their children will be stupid, as well. On the other hand, it's easier to control them if you want to. Like they did in Medieval ages and earlier. Yeah, let's go back to that. The ROI is as indirect and long term as it gets, but it's real and it's massive.
- ttoinou 10y ago
  You have to compare comparables situations : what could have been done different with the same resources involved ? Having an educational system is a sign that the society is wealthy and can afford it, but doesn't mean it's the best use of resources involved (thus it might have a bad ROI). You said education was overlooked where you come from, was there an educational system there ?
qb45 10y ago
I think it's a matter of value being shaped by under- or oversupply. Speaking of illiteracy, there's an urban legend (not sure if true, anyone with access to data please check it) that literacy rate has actually dropped in the US throughout the 20th century, coinciding with increase of education "supply".
- VLM 10y ago
  No data exists for that because the definition of illiteracy depends too strongly on the axe being ground. Everything from 1% to 66% illiteracy has been attempted to sell to people. It does seem that illiteracy clusters with various citizenship status, racial and other demographics, simple age distribution of a geographic location, and socioeconomic level to an extent that if you successfully filter those effects out you end up with a boring flat line at 100% literacy when ends up meaning nothing. The largest factor is literacy graphs and maps are basically a restatement of immigration data.
randomdata 10y ago
I believe he is referring to postsecondary education specifically. In North America, K-12 exists to make one a functioning member of society. For what flaws it may have, it has overall shown to be beneficial. With that measured success, we got the idea that once you were a functioning member of society, you could become a functioning member of the workforce simply by continuing in even more years of schooling. But it's not clear if it has really worked out. In 1970, approximately 10% of the US population had a bachelors degree or higher. In 2017, that number is closer to 30%, yet incomes have remained stagnant throughout that entire period and job quality has declined. Not what you'd expect from the promised higher incomes and better jobs that people were willing to spend large amounts of money for.
- SFJulie 10y ago
  I was indeed referring to post secondary education. If I was no troll, I would admit a soft tooth for Finland focus on early education and the amazing results they have doing so. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/sep/20/grammar-schools-play-europe-top-education-system-finland-daycare https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/sep/20/grammar-sc...
humanrebar 10y ago
It's worth distinguishing between basic literacy (including basic math skills) and graduate-level specialty degrees. For one, if the labor market in a particular specialty becomes oversaturated, does that mean existing grads need to spend years retraining?
Shorel 10y ago
He is talking about College/University education, and companies sometimes requiring advanced degrees for basic jobs. High school is and will always be needed. Also, for some careers university education is obviously necessary. Just not always. However, this probably only applies to the USA, or other places (South America as well) where students get into high debt to get degrees.

SlySherZ 10y ago

It depends a lot on which parts of education you're talking about. The first 9-12 years are required so that kids have something to do while their parents are at work. Learning stuff and interacting with other people is a nice way to spend their time. From that point, it depends on the subject you decide to study. It seems to me that medicine students get a lot of real life practice during their training, which makes the school almost irreplaceable. In other areas, like programming, you're better of staying at home and watching online lectures and making your own pet projects to learn, as long as you have enough self discipline to keep yourself on track. There are tons of resources you can learn from and you can practice as much as you want. I did it and it has been working well so far. Overall, I wouldn't say we should ditch education at all, but we should seriously rethink the way it works. We can do much better than this.

humanrebar 10y ago
> ...you're better of staying at home and watching online lectures and making your own pet projects to learn While I agree that you can get pretty far with self-study on small projects, the most important parts of software engineering revolve around communication, especially with other developers and with expert tools. It's hard to get better at communication without, well, communicating. Of course, one can get a lot of experience by contributing to open source projects or finding other ways to work on group projects.
- SlySherZ 10y ago
  I completly agree with the need to communicate and program with other people. From my experience, computer science degrees severely lack this communication trainning. You do ~2 small group projects per semester. The group splits the project into parts and everyone goes and does it's own part alone. There is no teamwork, source control, tests nor anything like that. I seriously hope other universities do it differently and I just attended the wrong one.
  - humanrebar 10y ago
    I had team projects, somewhat resembling what you describe. No, I had no source control or testing training at all. I chalk that up to more academic programs being oriented towards computer science and mathematics than craftsmanship, engineering, and project management concerns.

IgorPartola 10y ago

s/education/higher education in liberal arts and business/g. Next time you need surgery, you probably don't want your doctor to have been self taught.

randomdata 10y ago
If resources were infinite, I wouldn't have any concern about a self-taught doctor. If they are smart enough to perform surgery, they're smart enough to figure out how to do it. The challenge the real world presents is that the resources needed to reach that level, such as access to specialized equipment, is not in reach of the average person. It's not like a software development career where a widely available personal computer that can be purchased for hundreds – even tens – of dollars pretty much sums up everything you need to become among the best in the world. What the schools have been able to provide is a place where people can pool their resources to gain shared access to infrastructure. Education comes as a natural consequence of effectively utilizing that infrastructure, of course.
- IgorPartola 10y ago
  Smart does not mean experienced. I don't say this often on HN, but you really have no clue with what you are talking about here.
  - randomdata 10y ago
    Where, exactly, do you think experience comes from? By actually utilizing the aforementioned infrastructure that is not accessible to most people. Nobody becomes a surgeon just by watching a lecture in a classroom. If it were that simple, surgeons really could just watch some Youtube videos. I get the impression you didn't actually stop to take in what I wrote.
SFJulie 10y ago
Having a father who was a surgeon (and quite good), I have enough real life feedback to say that apprenticeship/internship in medecine may matter more than the years of theoretical studies that actually are used mostly for selecting the «right persons». Not to say theoretical education worth naught, I say there is a cursor that is way tilted in favour of theory that costs less and make universities earn more. Let's call it a corporatism behaviour. You don't want a surgeon that was good at school, you want a surgeon that when his hospital is poor will use his earning to buy medical reviews to stay up to date, say fuck to the hospital and take unpaid vacations to go in conferences to stay up to date. You want a surgeon that don't care about his diploma, or the titles but stay focused on his craft and will go on learning without caring for what society legally requires him to do in order to practice.