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Dangerous trend. A large part of the reason my country (Denmark) is as rich as it is because of education. We too talk about the value of certain parts of acade

Dangerous trend. A large part of the reason my country (Denmark) is as rich as it is because of education. We too talk about the value of certain parts of academia, like Ancient Greek, and whether or not too many people go to the university. It's all become very cost-benefit, and while the discussion is a reasonable one to have, most of our entrepreneurship comes from educational environments and a lot of the benefits of education can't be directly measured. I mean, there is a reason Tesla had to hire a Swedish company to do the interior design of their cars and that Scandinavian design is increasingly more influential in to world. We're not born better artists/designers, but we do have a nurturing environment for those sort of things to grow and a way for the designers to form easy partnerships with business degrees to be successful. I did project management and later general management autodidactic for a while. It worked perfectly fine, but after taking a degree in management I find myself wondering how the hell it ever worked. Gut feeling, a clever mind and a willingness to learn on your own will get you a long way, and you can absolutely succeed without education. But academia not only teaches you tested methods it also teaches you why you use them and how to determine which ones are best suited for a given situation.

Judgmentality 9y ago
What did you learn from your management courses? Genuinely curious, as I've always found that people with degrees in management were no better (and probably slightly worse) than people that just figured it out. My evidence is anecdotal and limited, so I'd be interested to hear what you found useful about your program.
- geomark 9y ago
  My anecdata from working quite a few years at big tech companies where most of the staff began as technical and then some went off to get business degrees to advance into management, is that the biggest change was they started using a lot of business school buzz words and attached much more importance to spreadsheets and presentations than they used to.
  - Judgmentality 9y ago
    "2/3 of HBS is BS" -Ben Rich, former Director of Lockheed Skunkworks
- eksemplar 9y ago
  Coming from a technical background a lot of the softer sciences were quite new to me personally. Things like social constructivism and the mangement methoods based on it werent completely unfamiliar to me, but learning how to use analysis, understanding and argumentation to steer strategic decision as well as employees in the direction I want, has been immensely useful.
prostoalex 9y ago
Degree != education, though. In the US system a bunch of introductory lecture-only courses could potentially be pushed down to high schools or outfits like Coursera/edX without the requirement of paying $35,000 to be physically present in the room. Online delivery doesn't work well for seminars or labs, but basic proficiency with lecture material before enrolling and taking out a student loan would boost the graduation rate. Currently only 59% of students enrolled in a college program in the US complete their four-year degree six years down the road https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40
- rdl 9y ago
  I wish there were a way to do th labs as an outsourced thing, sort of like hacker spaces. Doing a few weeks or months of lab work together with a group of people would be great fun and a useful adjunct to other education -- I've done this for various technical skills (firearms, armorer, machining, medical, diving) and expanding it to more academic topics would be awesome.
  - geomark 9y ago
    Is there a business opportunity in this idea? Coworking and Maker spaces are all the rage now days. How about tailoring those kind of spaces in collaboration with a MOOC to bring labs to the students. It obviously doesn't scale like a MOOC. But it might work in population centers that have a lot of MOOC students.
    - rdl 9y ago
      For a lot of physical skills, Techshop is the model I'd use. They run amazing classes, plus have a credentialing system in place to access certain kinds of equipment.
      - dfc 9y ago
        They recently opened a TechShop in Arlington. I did not realize how spoiled I was with NoVaLabs. It seems like techshop is all-or-nothing pricing. There is no plan that allows for light to moderate use. For $400 less than techshop yearly bill I can get 24h access to NoVaLabs.
noshbrinken 9y ago
I think you're missing the point. I don't think that Americans are losing faith in the value of education. Most Americans I know envy the low cost of education in Europe exactly because they would like the same conditions of access. Simply put, we want to go to school. But we don't want to sink ourselves into decades of debt to do so. Would anyone?
- carlmr 9y ago
  You'll have to agree to pay a lot more taxes though. I got a Bachelor's degree in Germany where it was cheap (we had some tuition at the time, but nothing compared to the US). Let's say it costs 15k a year (not what they charge, but the actual cost, which counts in a state sponsored system). That is 52.5k over the 3.5 years I studied. I've since paid at least that amount extra taxes as compared to the US. But I still have quite a few years of work ahead of me, so I'll be paying off this "debt" for a long time. Basically you're trading the freedom to choose to go in debt for a personal decision, for going in debt for the average decision in your country. I'm ok with it, but I think it's a very different philosophy. A similar thing when I see single payer health care proposals in the US where they say it's too costly. Well d'uh. You gotta charge health care tax. It's not free, it's just that everyone is paying into the same pool. I'm paying almost 700€ a month for my socialized health insurance. Mostly because it's adapted to your income. But it's really not low cost or free. Just that everyone is paying together.
  - cannonedhamster 9y ago
    700€ is dramatically lower than what my employer pays for my healthcare with my family and that still has deductibles and Co-Pays. I'm not sure what your amount includes so I don't know if it's a fair comparison, but if it is then that's not a bad price at all.
jngreenlee 9y ago
Perhaps this is a disconnect: "academia not only teaches you tested methods it also teaches you why you use them and how to determine which ones are best suited for a given situation." In the US, I can't 100% defend our universities (of which I am a product...both engineering and MBA) of achieving this (which would be a fine) goal. In fact, in the US, it's proabably easier to be skeptical of "The Ivory Tower", where one hears what will work and should be done, only to go into the field, and find out it's a bunch of non-practical garbage from a textbook some prof wanted to sell.
njarboe 9y ago
It is dangerous when college becomes, instead of education, indoctrination + a piece of paper + high debt. This is not always the case, but many people evaluate their own situation and rightfully don't think a college degree is right for them. Since almost everyone in high school is constantly pushing for the students to go to college, anyone that figures that it is not right for them is likely correct. In the US one can always go back to school later, if you decide you want to.
- tomjakubowski 9y ago
  What "indoctrination" is present at the college level in the US? I can certainly think of examples at earlier stages of US education, like the (effectively) compulsory daily pledge of allegiance.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
    Indoctrination in to the consumerist-materialist-debt-burdened-over-worked-under-paid dream of the current era. I'm not sure anyone is actually convinced by it, but it sure does seem we are convinced we can't implement an alternative.
    - JamesBarney 9y ago
      What made me a materialist was not the wonderland of college but seeing close friends of the family slip up and see their lives spiral out of control because they didn't have enough money. Money doesn't matter when you're 21, and rich in health, family and friends. Money matters soo much when you're 56, tired, boring, and have a bad back.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
        I'm picking up what you're putting down. Pretty much the same thing happened to me. I wish I wasn't so late to the party, I could have had my house paid off my now. Still, I dream there was a less stressful way of going about it all.
velodrome 9y ago
> A large part of the reason my country (Denmark) is as rich as it is because of education No, it is because they have marketable (in demand) skill(s). If the whole country received a degree in history, would Denmark be as rich as it is today? They have an "education" right?
- yequalsx 9y ago
  I understand your point but without a diversity of degrees I think there will also be a loss. Perhaps not an obvious, quantifiable loss. If everyone got a STEM degree in Denmark (include economics and finance) I think the consequences would be as bad if everyone got a degree in history. Having a society in which people care about others and want to live in requires more than quantifiable utility. I think focusing on "marketable" is not a good governmental policy. It seems to me that education is the correct level of focus in terms of governmental policy.
rezistik 9y ago
But in Denmark are you paying $100,000 + interest for your shiny paper? Because that's what we charge in the states.
- deepakg 9y ago
  But in Denmark, one pays high taxes which, among other things, go towards subsidising higher education: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Denmark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Denmark Under the Danish tax system, it is possible for a high-wage earner to pay up to 51.5% of their total income after gross tax, giving a total of 57% of total income.
  - rubicon33 9y ago
    Does that include property tax, sales tax, and smaller (but still impactful) taxes like alcohol tax? The actual number, as a percentage of your income, that you pay in the US is very likely around - if not higher - than 50%.
    - lsc 9y ago
      If you are paying 50% of your income as taxes in the US, you are making enough money that you shouldn't be complaining about college being expensive. And... there's a weird hump, because capital gains are taxed at a much lower rate. in that bracket, you have the very top end of those who work as employees, and small business owners who end up having to pay income tax on their profits. Much above that and most of your income is usually in the form of capital gains, and thus taxed less.
      - eggy 9y ago
        I take @rubicon33's point that even if you make $40,000 a year, and your income tax works out to be 20-25%, you still pay 8.875% in NY for sales tax, and the other taxes. Looking at it that way, you pay over 35% or more when all is said and done. You are taxed on previously taxed income.
  - 9y ago
flukus 9y ago
> But academia not only teaches you tested methods it also teaches you why you use them and how to determine which ones are best suited for a given situation. IME academia absolutely does not teach that, most academics wouldn't know how to determine that. What tool to apply for a given situation is something I'd say is only learned with and can only be learned from industry experience. For example, my day to day work would be much more pleasant of academia didn't go overboard making students create OO hierarchies for everything.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  Also surprisingly with academic experience. Of course use of tools in academia is vastly different from one outside. Academia has less of a time pressure and less of a budget often (at least in Europe). Cannot speak for non-STEM though.
sambo1 9y ago
I'm just going to point out that Elon musk says he doesn't care if somebody has a college degree. He says the attitude is more important. I also highly doubt that he "had to hire" swedes. And if he did that would be an indication that something besides education was the reason. Education is in many countries if swedes are special, it must be something else.
- cholantesh 9y ago
  >Elon musk says he doesn't care if somebody has a college degree. So he says, but I have yet to see roles in Tesla's core business units that don't require post-secondary education.

Judgmentality 9y ago

What did you learn from your management courses? Genuinely curious, as I've always found that people with degrees in management were no better (and probably slightly worse) than people that just figured it out. My evidence is anecdotal and limited, so I'd be interested to hear what you found useful about your program.

geomark 9y ago
My anecdata from working quite a few years at big tech companies where most of the staff began as technical and then some went off to get business degrees to advance into management, is that the biggest change was they started using a lot of business school buzz words and attached much more importance to spreadsheets and presentations than they used to.
- Judgmentality 9y ago
  "2/3 of HBS is BS" -Ben Rich, former Director of Lockheed Skunkworks
eksemplar 9y ago
Coming from a technical background a lot of the softer sciences were quite new to me personally. Things like social constructivism and the mangement methoods based on it werent completely unfamiliar to me, but learning how to use analysis, understanding and argumentation to steer strategic decision as well as employees in the direction I want, has been immensely useful.

prostoalex 9y ago

Degree != education, though. In the US system a bunch of introductory lecture-only courses could potentially be pushed down to high schools or outfits like Coursera/edX without the requirement of paying $35,000 to be physically present in the room. Online delivery doesn't work well for seminars or labs, but basic proficiency with lecture material before enrolling and taking out a student loan would boost the graduation rate. Currently only 59% of students enrolled in a college program in the US complete their four-year degree six years down the road https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40

rdl 9y ago
I wish there were a way to do th labs as an outsourced thing, sort of like hacker spaces. Doing a few weeks or months of lab work together with a group of people would be great fun and a useful adjunct to other education -- I've done this for various technical skills (firearms, armorer, machining, medical, diving) and expanding it to more academic topics would be awesome.
- geomark 9y ago
  Is there a business opportunity in this idea? Coworking and Maker spaces are all the rage now days. How about tailoring those kind of spaces in collaboration with a MOOC to bring labs to the students. It obviously doesn't scale like a MOOC. But it might work in population centers that have a lot of MOOC students.
  - rdl 9y ago
    For a lot of physical skills, Techshop is the model I'd use. They run amazing classes, plus have a credentialing system in place to access certain kinds of equipment.
    - dfc 9y ago
      They recently opened a TechShop in Arlington. I did not realize how spoiled I was with NoVaLabs. It seems like techshop is all-or-nothing pricing. There is no plan that allows for light to moderate use. For $400 less than techshop yearly bill I can get 24h access to NoVaLabs.

noshbrinken 9y ago

I think you're missing the point. I don't think that Americans are losing faith in the value of education. Most Americans I know envy the low cost of education in Europe exactly because they would like the same conditions of access. Simply put, we want to go to school. But we don't want to sink ourselves into decades of debt to do so. Would anyone?

carlmr 9y ago
You'll have to agree to pay a lot more taxes though. I got a Bachelor's degree in Germany where it was cheap (we had some tuition at the time, but nothing compared to the US). Let's say it costs 15k a year (not what they charge, but the actual cost, which counts in a state sponsored system). That is 52.5k over the 3.5 years I studied. I've since paid at least that amount extra taxes as compared to the US. But I still have quite a few years of work ahead of me, so I'll be paying off this "debt" for a long time. Basically you're trading the freedom to choose to go in debt for a personal decision, for going in debt for the average decision in your country. I'm ok with it, but I think it's a very different philosophy. A similar thing when I see single payer health care proposals in the US where they say it's too costly. Well d'uh. You gotta charge health care tax. It's not free, it's just that everyone is paying into the same pool. I'm paying almost 700€ a month for my socialized health insurance. Mostly because it's adapted to your income. But it's really not low cost or free. Just that everyone is paying together.
- cannonedhamster 9y ago
  700€ is dramatically lower than what my employer pays for my healthcare with my family and that still has deductibles and Co-Pays. I'm not sure what your amount includes so I don't know if it's a fair comparison, but if it is then that's not a bad price at all.

jngreenlee 9y ago

Perhaps this is a disconnect: "academia not only teaches you tested methods it also teaches you why you use them and how to determine which ones are best suited for a given situation." In the US, I can't 100% defend our universities (of which I am a product...both engineering and MBA) of achieving this (which would be a fine) goal. In fact, in the US, it's proabably easier to be skeptical of "The Ivory Tower", where one hears what will work and should be done, only to go into the field, and find out it's a bunch of non-practical garbage from a textbook some prof wanted to sell.

njarboe 9y ago

It is dangerous when college becomes, instead of education, indoctrination + a piece of paper + high debt. This is not always the case, but many people evaluate their own situation and rightfully don't think a college degree is right for them. Since almost everyone in high school is constantly pushing for the students to go to college, anyone that figures that it is not right for them is likely correct. In the US one can always go back to school later, if you decide you want to.

tomjakubowski 9y ago
What "indoctrination" is present at the college level in the US? I can certainly think of examples at earlier stages of US education, like the (effectively) compulsory daily pledge of allegiance.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  Indoctrination in to the consumerist-materialist-debt-burdened-over-worked-under-paid dream of the current era. I'm not sure anyone is actually convinced by it, but it sure does seem we are convinced we can't implement an alternative.
  - JamesBarney 9y ago
    What made me a materialist was not the wonderland of college but seeing close friends of the family slip up and see their lives spiral out of control because they didn't have enough money. Money doesn't matter when you're 21, and rich in health, family and friends. Money matters soo much when you're 56, tired, boring, and have a bad back.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
      I'm picking up what you're putting down. Pretty much the same thing happened to me. I wish I wasn't so late to the party, I could have had my house paid off my now. Still, I dream there was a less stressful way of going about it all.

velodrome 9y ago

> A large part of the reason my country (Denmark) is as rich as it is because of education No, it is because they have marketable (in demand) skill(s). If the whole country received a degree in history, would Denmark be as rich as it is today? They have an "education" right?

yequalsx 9y ago
I understand your point but without a diversity of degrees I think there will also be a loss. Perhaps not an obvious, quantifiable loss. If everyone got a STEM degree in Denmark (include economics and finance) I think the consequences would be as bad if everyone got a degree in history. Having a society in which people care about others and want to live in requires more than quantifiable utility. I think focusing on "marketable" is not a good governmental policy. It seems to me that education is the correct level of focus in terms of governmental policy.

rezistik 9y ago

But in Denmark are you paying $100,000 + interest for your shiny paper? Because that's what we charge in the states.

deepakg 9y ago
But in Denmark, one pays high taxes which, among other things, go towards subsidising higher education: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Denmark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Denmark Under the Danish tax system, it is possible for a high-wage earner to pay up to 51.5% of their total income after gross tax, giving a total of 57% of total income.
- rubicon33 9y ago
  Does that include property tax, sales tax, and smaller (but still impactful) taxes like alcohol tax? The actual number, as a percentage of your income, that you pay in the US is very likely around - if not higher - than 50%.
  - lsc 9y ago
    If you are paying 50% of your income as taxes in the US, you are making enough money that you shouldn't be complaining about college being expensive. And... there's a weird hump, because capital gains are taxed at a much lower rate. in that bracket, you have the very top end of those who work as employees, and small business owners who end up having to pay income tax on their profits. Much above that and most of your income is usually in the form of capital gains, and thus taxed less.
    - eggy 9y ago
      I take @rubicon33's point that even if you make $40,000 a year, and your income tax works out to be 20-25%, you still pay 8.875% in NY for sales tax, and the other taxes. Looking at it that way, you pay over 35% or more when all is said and done. You are taxed on previously taxed income.
- 9y ago

flukus 9y ago

> But academia not only teaches you tested methods it also teaches you why you use them and how to determine which ones are best suited for a given situation. IME academia absolutely does not teach that, most academics wouldn't know how to determine that. What tool to apply for a given situation is something I'd say is only learned with and can only be learned from industry experience. For example, my day to day work would be much more pleasant of academia didn't go overboard making students create OO hierarchies for everything.

AstralStorm 9y ago
Also surprisingly with academic experience. Of course use of tools in academia is vastly different from one outside. Academia has less of a time pressure and less of a budget often (at least in Europe). Cannot speak for non-STEM though.

sambo1 9y ago

I'm just going to point out that Elon musk says he doesn't care if somebody has a college degree. He says the attitude is more important. I also highly doubt that he "had to hire" swedes. And if he did that would be an indication that something besides education was the reason. Education is in many countries if swedes are special, it must be something else.

cholantesh 9y ago
>Elon musk says he doesn't care if somebody has a college degree. So he says, but I have yet to see roles in Tesla's core business units that don't require post-secondary education.