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Let me a add a wrinkle to the mix specifically in terms of grade inflation. The value of most coursework and any learnings gleaned from it, has dropped signifi

Let me a add a wrinkle to the mix specifically in terms of grade inflation. The value of most coursework and any learnings gleaned from it, has dropped significantly. The best value from entering education institutions is instead from job opportunities after. Unfortunately, these opportunities are often based on grades. If the grades are more important than the coursework, then of course students will optimize for it. Students should choose institutions & teachers based on both quality of opportunities and ease of coursework. Going a step further, teachers that don't understand the changing interests of their students should be reprimanded. At my university, most major recruiting for internships and such happened in one semester. Now, I specifically remember the dichotomy of two of my professors' approach to this. Prof John - If you miss a class/deadline/exam due to recruiting, you get a 0. Prof George - I understand recruiting is happening, reach out to me ASAP if you feel overwhelmed or need a date changed. Now, the coursework has largely been forgotten. But, I will never forget John's idiocy.

sevensor 8y ago
I think you'll come to regret this attitude when you reach your mid-30s with no skills other than the concrete procedural skills you picked up on the job. I use my education constantly, and in ways I wouldn't have anticipated. I often see people doing things the hard way because they don't know there's any other way, or passing on opportunities to do something interesting because they don't realize it's even possible.
- quacked 8y ago
  The comment you're responding to isn't an attitude that the poster has, it's an explanation of how students are responding to changes in incentives. As the total number of college graduates grows, they're competing in job markets that are smaller than the total number of college graduates. This ratio is unbalanced and becoming more unbalanced with every year. The people hiring college graduates are developing stricter and stricter filters in order to decide what body of people they're even going to allow to compete in the job market; the biggest, easiest filter to sort out who's truly competitive for positions is grades, and so it makes sense that students compete to get the best grades. rather than competing to be the most competent. Most grads are leaving college in tremendous debt with the understanding that the longer they go without employment, the less likely it is they'll end up employed. This means that while they're in college, rather than focusing on the material they're learning, they're focusing on whatever will allow them to have the largest advantage when they enter the job market. In order for this trend to reverse, the cost of college needs to be dramatically lessened; I think this could be accomplished by reducing the total percentage of high school graduates that attend college immediately, increasing the prevalence of online schools, and reducing university overhead by cutting services to students and administrative positions.
analog31 8y ago
The grading just gets kicked down the road. Now, because we don't trust your credentials, we give you a coding exam, that is effectively a grade. Likewise, an open secret is that college work is a simulation of the workplace. Those college students who develop through practice the ability to turn in work on time that makes their teachers happy, will also be able to do the same in the workplace. If you give up the chance to learn it while it's available to you in college, where your only risk is a Zero on an assignment, you will learn it later in the school of hard knocks. Your performance review will be a grade. There are people who come to work knowing how to get good grades, and others who don't. This is coming from one who struggled to get good grades in college. A goose egg on an assignment is rarely an isolated occurrance. Knowing educators, and having kids in high school, I know that the kids who miss a deadline during recruiting tend to have already missed many deadlines over the years. I strongly believe that while credentialism and college brand recognition are real and probably regrettable, if those are your only reasons for attending college, then you are wasting your money and your life, whereas someone who has other reasons for attending the same college is getting a lot more value out of it. But colleges assume they get the same money either way, so it's really your choice.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  > Likewise, an open secret is that college work is a simulation of the workplace. I don't think this is the case, and hasn't been for a long time. Assuming you're not looking at graduate classes college is largely a game of keeping your head down and doing the work you need to when you need to and the minimizing effort other than that. Cramming is totally a viable option as the metrics for success in college are totally different than the workplace. The skills one learns to survive in college are extremely maladaptive to a long term functional career. If the criteria for success are orthogonal, how can one be a simulation of the other?
  - analog31 8y ago
    In my view treating college as largely a game or whose metric is sheer survival, is wasting money, or more likely, paying to support the students who are getting something else out of it. This is not necessarily a personal judgment, because there may be people who are predisposed to see everything as a game, but who deserve to get the best education possible anyway. Here's my stupid parable. Give two people shovels and send them into a mine. One of them comes back with a bag of gold. The other comes back with an intense hangover. What's broken, the shovel or the mine? Colleges, despite the image of paternalism, are actually designed to let you fail. People will leak clues on how to survive, but are less likely to tell you explicitly how to succeed. But everybody has the same chance of getting a degree in something. As a result, the people who benefit from the signaling and branding of the college outnumber the people who got a good education out of it, creating the impression that college is largely about signaling and branding. But college is really about deciding what you want to get out of it. There are doubtlessly many things wrong with college education today, but in spite of that, taking college at face value and pursuing it in a relatively straightforward way may still be a better strategy than trying to figure out what game to play in order to survive.

sevensor 8y ago

I think you'll come to regret this attitude when you reach your mid-30s with no skills other than the concrete procedural skills you picked up on the job. I use my education constantly, and in ways I wouldn't have anticipated. I often see people doing things the hard way because they don't know there's any other way, or passing on opportunities to do something interesting because they don't realize it's even possible.

quacked 8y ago
The comment you're responding to isn't an attitude that the poster has, it's an explanation of how students are responding to changes in incentives. As the total number of college graduates grows, they're competing in job markets that are smaller than the total number of college graduates. This ratio is unbalanced and becoming more unbalanced with every year. The people hiring college graduates are developing stricter and stricter filters in order to decide what body of people they're even going to allow to compete in the job market; the biggest, easiest filter to sort out who's truly competitive for positions is grades, and so it makes sense that students compete to get the best grades. rather than competing to be the most competent. Most grads are leaving college in tremendous debt with the understanding that the longer they go without employment, the less likely it is they'll end up employed. This means that while they're in college, rather than focusing on the material they're learning, they're focusing on whatever will allow them to have the largest advantage when they enter the job market. In order for this trend to reverse, the cost of college needs to be dramatically lessened; I think this could be accomplished by reducing the total percentage of high school graduates that attend college immediately, increasing the prevalence of online schools, and reducing university overhead by cutting services to students and administrative positions.

analog31 8y ago

The grading just gets kicked down the road. Now, because we don't trust your credentials, we give you a coding exam, that is effectively a grade. Likewise, an open secret is that college work is a simulation of the workplace. Those college students who develop through practice the ability to turn in work on time that makes their teachers happy, will also be able to do the same in the workplace. If you give up the chance to learn it while it's available to you in college, where your only risk is a Zero on an assignment, you will learn it later in the school of hard knocks. Your performance review will be a grade. There are people who come to work knowing how to get good grades, and others who don't. This is coming from one who struggled to get good grades in college. A goose egg on an assignment is rarely an isolated occurrance. Knowing educators, and having kids in high school, I know that the kids who miss a deadline during recruiting tend to have already missed many deadlines over the years. I strongly believe that while credentialism and college brand recognition are real and probably regrettable, if those are your only reasons for attending college, then you are wasting your money and your life, whereas someone who has other reasons for attending the same college is getting a lot more value out of it. But colleges assume they get the same money either way, so it's really your choice.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
> Likewise, an open secret is that college work is a simulation of the workplace. I don't think this is the case, and hasn't been for a long time. Assuming you're not looking at graduate classes college is largely a game of keeping your head down and doing the work you need to when you need to and the minimizing effort other than that. Cramming is totally a viable option as the metrics for success in college are totally different than the workplace. The skills one learns to survive in college are extremely maladaptive to a long term functional career. If the criteria for success are orthogonal, how can one be a simulation of the other?
- analog31 8y ago
  In my view treating college as largely a game or whose metric is sheer survival, is wasting money, or more likely, paying to support the students who are getting something else out of it. This is not necessarily a personal judgment, because there may be people who are predisposed to see everything as a game, but who deserve to get the best education possible anyway. Here's my stupid parable. Give two people shovels and send them into a mine. One of them comes back with a bag of gold. The other comes back with an intense hangover. What's broken, the shovel or the mine? Colleges, despite the image of paternalism, are actually designed to let you fail. People will leak clues on how to survive, but are less likely to tell you explicitly how to succeed. But everybody has the same chance of getting a degree in something. As a result, the people who benefit from the signaling and branding of the college outnumber the people who got a good education out of it, creating the impression that college is largely about signaling and branding. But college is really about deciding what you want to get out of it. There are doubtlessly many things wrong with college education today, but in spite of that, taking college at face value and pursuing it in a relatively straightforward way may still be a better strategy than trying to figure out what game to play in order to survive.