4 ms·

Herd mentality: if everyone is getting a degree, i must too. If getting a degree is an investment, why don't put as much money in there as possible, if ROI is c

Herd mentality: if everyone is getting a degree, i must too. If getting a degree is an investment, why don't put as much money in there as possible, if ROI is constant? Both wrong. Most people who are getting college degrees nowadays simply can't make enough use of them to even break even. People have to stop! They are the only ones to blame; capitalism has no checks in place to prevent people from harming themselves, maybe that's bad, but ultimately, it is their decision to get a diploma they don't need and can't hope to put to good use, is to blame.

dnsco 8y ago
This article focuses on someone who went into debt for dental school. I prefer the idea of an educated dentist to dentists without diplomas. All that said, I agree with your sentiment, college is for many people completely unnecessary. As per the article, we as tax payers are on the hook for the debt that will be defaulted on, so the fact that this system has spiraled out of control will hurt all of us.
- roenxi 8y ago
  Can't challenge your preferences, but I would encourage a bit of reflection on why you think that education is an advantage here. I had some routine dental work done recently; some of my teeth were drilled out. It is a complete mystery to me why we think that a college level education is required for the man holding the drill. My body is very important to me, but it seems a tough sell that years of higher education would give a better outcome than years of, say, straightforward practice. I want a competent dentist, but their education isn't worth as much to me as the steadiness of their hand and their willingness to be gentle with my poor mouth. In theory, any job could be done better by a more educated worker, but we could break it up into generalists and specialists like we do with electricians and electrical engineers. Save the education for people who deal with unusual problems.
- anovikov 8y ago
  Maybe there's just too many people who want to become dentists; resulting in too much demand and too high prices for dentists diplomas, and too many dentists for prices on their work to justify these diploma costs? Why not just allow everyone with a medical dimploma from a 1st world country to come, get GC at the airport, and get to job the next day? What are the downsides, except liberals around the world nagging again that U.S. were robbing them?
- arbie 8y ago
  > college is for many people completely unnecessary. This part of your comment is completely out of touch with reality. Nearly every position that pays over $40k/year requires college credentials.
  - anovikov 8y ago
    >Most people who are getting college degrees nowadays simply can't make enough use of them to even break even. Which means, most of these positions are in fact 'tails' of the distribution, they don't really exist, they are a net loss vs positions that pay less but do not require diploma. Because more people are getting diplomas than there are jobs really requiring it. If employers CAN get away with requiring a diploma for a position which doesn't really need it - why not doing it? At least it guarantees getting an employee which will be more loyal as he has to repay college debt so needs stable income. And they can get away with it because people falsely believe that college is a path to success and burn enormous money and years of life there.
eksemplar 8y ago
I come from a country with free education and the latter part is just plain wrong. Autodidact people are nearly always terrible programmers because they haven’t learned how to think. The few of them that actually understand CS principles are typically unable to work in teams because they’ve never been taught the fundamentals of working together. If they do have the right sort of personality (extremely rare in CS) they wont have the business side of things, making them unable to work with the people they are making systems for. Of course I lead teams in digitization where, self management, team work, business and customer interaction is part of what my programmers need to do. I’ve hired a lot of people by now, back between 1995 and 2005 a lot of them didn’t have much of an education behind them, and we’ve frankly spent 5 years cleaning up their mess since. Today we simply require a degree. It’s a little different in the IT department, they prefer certificates over degrees, but a lot of university engineering programs know this and give their students the essentials. We do have a mix of technical degrees. There is the candidate or bachelor(people typically never stop here) at the universities for the full education, but we also have various academy degrees that are “almost bachelor” programs, which focus less on the theoretical and science things and more on practical application. Both roads are perfectly fine, but you really need that piece of paper if you want a job that requires any sort of thinking.
- doctorless 8y ago
  > Autodidact people are nearly always terrible programmers because they haven’t learned how to think. Going off of the StackOverflow 2018 survey, only ~48% of professional developers have a CS, computer engineering or software engineering degree. If you’re willing to write off over half of potential applicants because your interviewing process clearly didn’t work well enough to verify the applicant can code, then sure, help inflate the degree bloat, but just understand, that even in countries where education is “free”, it comes at a cost that has to be picked up somewhere.
  - eksemplar 8y ago
    It’s a cost benefit sort of thing, the most expensive mistake i can make is hiring the wrong person. By requiring a degree I minimize the risk and I also save a lot of money by not having to test for technical aptitude. If you’ve completed a CS candidate degre at a Danish university, it tells me you would be able to write a quick search on our white board if I asked you to. Not because you’ve memorized it but because you’ve been taught problem solving. I’ll sometimes ask what candidates think if test-first or something like SOLID, but I don’t really care about their technical knowledge on it, what I’m evaluating is whether they give me an honest answer or if they’re telling me what they think I want to hear. Sure I could test people, but that would require 2-4 employees who planned, executed and evaluated the tests, which is expensive, and the university’s or the academy you graduated from has already done that. So what’s the point of it? A typical Danish job interview is 30 minutes of trying to learn your personality, because you’ve already given us your credentials. For important jobs, we’ll even test your personality and use that as a basis for the interview talks. I haven’t made a bad hire for more than a decade so I’m really not worried about missing out. Because hiring isn’t really about finding the right match, it’s about finding a good match.

dnsco 8y ago

This article focuses on someone who went into debt for dental school. I prefer the idea of an educated dentist to dentists without diplomas. All that said, I agree with your sentiment, college is for many people completely unnecessary. As per the article, we as tax payers are on the hook for the debt that will be defaulted on, so the fact that this system has spiraled out of control will hurt all of us.

roenxi 8y ago
Can't challenge your preferences, but I would encourage a bit of reflection on why you think that education is an advantage here. I had some routine dental work done recently; some of my teeth were drilled out. It is a complete mystery to me why we think that a college level education is required for the man holding the drill. My body is very important to me, but it seems a tough sell that years of higher education would give a better outcome than years of, say, straightforward practice. I want a competent dentist, but their education isn't worth as much to me as the steadiness of their hand and their willingness to be gentle with my poor mouth. In theory, any job could be done better by a more educated worker, but we could break it up into generalists and specialists like we do with electricians and electrical engineers. Save the education for people who deal with unusual problems.
anovikov 8y ago
Maybe there's just too many people who want to become dentists; resulting in too much demand and too high prices for dentists diplomas, and too many dentists for prices on their work to justify these diploma costs? Why not just allow everyone with a medical dimploma from a 1st world country to come, get GC at the airport, and get to job the next day? What are the downsides, except liberals around the world nagging again that U.S. were robbing them?
arbie 8y ago
> college is for many people completely unnecessary. This part of your comment is completely out of touch with reality. Nearly every position that pays over $40k/year requires college credentials.
- anovikov 8y ago
  >Most people who are getting college degrees nowadays simply can't make enough use of them to even break even. Which means, most of these positions are in fact 'tails' of the distribution, they don't really exist, they are a net loss vs positions that pay less but do not require diploma. Because more people are getting diplomas than there are jobs really requiring it. If employers CAN get away with requiring a diploma for a position which doesn't really need it - why not doing it? At least it guarantees getting an employee which will be more loyal as he has to repay college debt so needs stable income. And they can get away with it because people falsely believe that college is a path to success and burn enormous money and years of life there.

eksemplar 8y ago

I come from a country with free education and the latter part is just plain wrong. Autodidact people are nearly always terrible programmers because they haven’t learned how to think. The few of them that actually understand CS principles are typically unable to work in teams because they’ve never been taught the fundamentals of working together. If they do have the right sort of personality (extremely rare in CS) they wont have the business side of things, making them unable to work with the people they are making systems for. Of course I lead teams in digitization where, self management, team work, business and customer interaction is part of what my programmers need to do. I’ve hired a lot of people by now, back between 1995 and 2005 a lot of them didn’t have much of an education behind them, and we’ve frankly spent 5 years cleaning up their mess since. Today we simply require a degree. It’s a little different in the IT department, they prefer certificates over degrees, but a lot of university engineering programs know this and give their students the essentials. We do have a mix of technical degrees. There is the candidate or bachelor(people typically never stop here) at the universities for the full education, but we also have various academy degrees that are “almost bachelor” programs, which focus less on the theoretical and science things and more on practical application. Both roads are perfectly fine, but you really need that piece of paper if you want a job that requires any sort of thinking.

doctorless 8y ago
> Autodidact people are nearly always terrible programmers because they haven’t learned how to think. Going off of the StackOverflow 2018 survey, only ~48% of professional developers have a CS, computer engineering or software engineering degree. If you’re willing to write off over half of potential applicants because your interviewing process clearly didn’t work well enough to verify the applicant can code, then sure, help inflate the degree bloat, but just understand, that even in countries where education is “free”, it comes at a cost that has to be picked up somewhere.
- eksemplar 8y ago
  It’s a cost benefit sort of thing, the most expensive mistake i can make is hiring the wrong person. By requiring a degree I minimize the risk and I also save a lot of money by not having to test for technical aptitude. If you’ve completed a CS candidate degre at a Danish university, it tells me you would be able to write a quick search on our white board if I asked you to. Not because you’ve memorized it but because you’ve been taught problem solving. I’ll sometimes ask what candidates think if test-first or something like SOLID, but I don’t really care about their technical knowledge on it, what I’m evaluating is whether they give me an honest answer or if they’re telling me what they think I want to hear. Sure I could test people, but that would require 2-4 employees who planned, executed and evaluated the tests, which is expensive, and the university’s or the academy you graduated from has already done that. So what’s the point of it? A typical Danish job interview is 30 minutes of trying to learn your personality, because you’ve already given us your credentials. For important jobs, we’ll even test your personality and use that as a basis for the interview talks. I haven’t made a bad hire for more than a decade so I’m really not worried about missing out. Because hiring isn’t really about finding the right match, it’s about finding a good match.