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Most successful people have X. Government: “Let’s give everyone X!” Over time the value of X is diluted, loses its status signaling, and overall quality degra
by hectorr1 6y ago
Most successful people have X.
Government: “Let’s give everyone X!”
Over time the value of X is diluted, loses its status signaling, and overall quality degrades.
Successful people move to Y.
- mac01021 6y agoThe big question is "what is Y in this case"?
- quietbritishjim 6y agoPerhaps a degree from one of the "best" colleges/universities in the country.
- nix23 6y agoMore like having the best connection's from the university/family/friends ;)
- quietbritishjim 6y agoI never said the degree was a benefit itself! Just that it might satisfy "Most successful people have X" (Although, here in the UK at least, the quality of degrees genuinely does vary by university in a way that roughly corresponds to their rankings. I know that's an unfashionable observable but I have seen enough degree programs at different universities to know it's likely true unless I happen to have seen an atonishingly unrepresentative sample. Partly this is self fulfilling because lower ranked universities are forced to take less good students and the level of the programme has to be adjusted accordingly, but part of it really is to do with quality of teaching.)
- C1sc0cat 6y agoIt does vary when I worked at BT, one of our students doing a year out had lectures from one of the people who built the Manchester Baby. On our team we had a guy from ENA and he was the son of a French diplomat and a British mother - we quickly learnt he did not need any hand holding.
- reportgunner 6y agohttps://eu.packersnews.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/28/rick-singer-mastermind-college-admissions-scandal-grand-canyon-university-student/5524754002/ https://eu.packersnews.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/28/rick...
- zajio1am 6y agoTo prove intelligence and conscientiousness? Probably PhD degree.
- blaser-waffle 6y agoBollocks. Ph.Ds don't mean much unless you want to do research and provide cheap labor for 5 years. I'd say a Master's is the new BA/BS. With everyone getting an undergrad degree via online schools, or via 6+ years of undergrad college, it's ability to filter is weak. A brick-and-mortar Master's serves as a way to differentiate from that pack; I'm not sure what an online Master's equates to.
- minicoz 6y agoNow there are online degrees from good brick-and-mortar schools that do not mention they are online. Georgia Techs OMSA, OMSCS, UT Austin Masters in DS, CS online.
- rootusrootus 6y agoMaybe an online master's will actually be a better filter than brick-and-mortar? I'd say it takes more fortitude to stick with an online program and finish it, so at some point maybe 'online' won't be a pejorative, it'll be a bragging point.
- chrisco255 6y agoThat just proves how masochistic you are.
- baron_harkonnen 6y agoA PhD only signals that you have an unhealthy relationship with academia. I've interviewed and worked with so many PhD from top tier schools and it's astounding to me that someone can spend 6+ years studying a quantitative science, at a school like MIT or Harvard and still not have a basic understanding of statistics, and worse be incapable of genuinely understanding any of the quantitative tools they used for years. The current generation of PhDs don't know how to do any kind of real research, they simply know how to mechanically replicate the processes you need to survive in academia today.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jbob2000 6y agoHaving your parents fund your startup and getting all their friends to support you until you hit critical mass where you don't need their help anymore.
- elindbe2 6y agoA job at Google? I've seen plenty of videos and articles with titles like: "Ex-googler explains the meaning of life".
- jsolson 6y agoPerhaps it is only upon leaving Google that one achieves transcendence? (Source: I work at Google, yet still see life as often confusing and sometimes terrifying)
- parsnips 6y agoBetter leave now while there's still value in leaving!
- mpfundstein 6y agoyes sometimes you need to see the worst in order to appreciate the little :-)
- bananaface 6y agoTechlead isn't serious
- atom-morgan 6y agoTeaching yourself new skills using the Internet.
- devalgo 6y agoPeople always parrot this but how many Doctors do you know with no degree? Take a poll at Google engineers and see how many are actually self taught and have no degree. How many Wall Street bankers/traders/etc have no degree? How many US Senators have no degree? How many World Leaders in history have had no formal education? Not counting dropouts, what percentage of Billionaires have no college education? The reality is still that the overwhelming majority of "successful" people still have degrees. You can argue what the root of this is whether it's the added knowledge or signalling of the degree, or intrinsic self motivation of the person, etc. but that fact still remains.
- rgblambda 6y ago> You can argue what the root of this is whether it's the added knowledge or signalling of the degree, or intrinsic self motivation of the person, etc. but that fact still remains. More discussion on "the root of this" might lead to the above changing.
- devalgo 6y agoI agree, but it hasn't changed yet. Despite the "teach truckers to code" kind of rhetoric and survivorship bias of self taught coders.
- foxyv 6y agoUsually 2+ years of experience in a certain field.
- MuffinFlavored 6y agoHow do you get enough experience for employers in said field to take a chance on you? It's all about getting over that initial hurdle of 100% unexperienced.
- foxyv 6y agoUsually by being willing to work for peanuts for a really low budget place.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoAnd that do all fields have budget places where you can work in for peanuts? Are all fields of the "just figure it out on the job" variety? Software is a weird bubble, but are all industries able to do that?
- foxyv 6y agoYeah, for the most part. You have to get your foot in the door. Usually by having a family member or friend give you a leg up. There are few professions that have some sort of on-the job learning for the inexperienced that can be replaced by college. Especially at the BS/BA level. If you don't have that foot in the door you are usually spending a few years working for "Exposure" or "Networking opportunities." Sometimes for minimum wage or less. Unless the job is so hard that it's constantly churning workers. I'm sure a lot of jobs will take you off the street with no experience, but they will be dangerous and/or unpleasant. Naturally when generalizing there will be exceptions. But that was essentially the rule when I got out of college. 2+ years experience prerequisite for most "Entry-Level" positions.
- stillbourne 6y agoI think we should bring back the guild system. Start a job as an apprentice, mentor with a journeyman, progress your way up, mentor apprentices while learning from others higher up, gain sufficient knowledge to build your masterpiece, graduate as a master in your field, mentor journeymen. Move on.
- Arkdy 6y ago8th Light is a software company that's been explicitly practicing apprenticeship for like 12 years https://8thlight.com/blog/ryan-verner/2019/01/15/evolution-of-apprenticeship.html https://8thlight.com/blog/ryan-verner/2019/01/15/evolution-o...
- C1sc0cat 6y agoAs someone who came into the industry through the vocational track this is interesting. But it is confusing are 8th Light acting as a source of training for other companies or just internal use. How many years is it 4 / 5 what certification do you get at the end? Why are you using "trade" terminology normally those doing "advanced apprenticeship" where associate professions and calling us "apprentices" would have got you a hard look. when I did mine in the UK I was a Junior member of the IMECHE on the path way to full chartered (PE) membership It does seem a bit light how long is the apprenticeship If FANG companies where serious about training / diversity this is what they should be doing take bright high school kids at 18/19 and sign them up for a proper 4/5 year apprenticeship.
- psychometry 6y agoWho's going to pay for someone to be unproductive at their job? Corporations surely don't want to anymore.
- stillbourne 6y agoYou mean you can't have lower level people working on bug fixes and small tasks while you save bigger more difficult work for more advanced people? Who says they won't be productive? What is your measure of productivity?
- brain5ide 6y agoThis. Just substitute goverment with society/market/evolution. Government is too small a fish for this phenomenon.
- gspr 6y agoI mean there's a lot more to university than "success preparation". While university is indeed no guarantee for success, it does seem to help a lot with your understanding of the world and your ability to think critically. I'm lucky enough to come from a country with free decent universities, so maybe it's easy for me to say, but I can't even put a price on how my education changed every single part of how I think and understand the world. That it prepared me for a well-paying job is just a nice side-effect. How well do you think the misinformation that laid the foundation for the political shitstorm the US is in now could have taken hold if most people had a college education?
- jimhefferon 6y ago> could have taken hold Yes, especially if all or at least most colleges considered it a high priority to educate people in what used to be called citizenship.
- 082349872349872 6y agoIsn't citizenship a high school subject?
- dhairya 6y agoThe value of college is not being diluted. It's the signal to employers that college degrees is useful filter that is being diluted. Hiring in general is done poorly and I understand why. It's hard to differentiate between so many candidates especially for entry level positions where a lack of job history makes it difficult to evaluate talent. So it makes sense that employers optimize for lazy signals like completion of a degree. In general universal education is far better for a country.
- LatteLazy 6y agoGovernment: “Let’s give everyone X!” Next government: “Let’s charge everyone for X!” Next government: “Let’s overcharge everyone for X to the point where the price equals or exceeds the value!”
- gruez 6y agoIt's sadder than that, because the latter two implies there were some evil mustache twirling decision makers in government who want to cause grief by raising tuition. Instead, it's a combination of good intentions gone awry: the government flooding the marketplace with money by offering student loans to nearly everyone, regardless of probability of payback; and the universities happily soaking that money up by spending increasing amounts of money on "student experience" and athletic programs, in a bid to attract students.
- bradly 6y agoWe give everyone in the U.S. high school education and we don't make the claims you make above. Why would higher education be different? The purpose of free higher ed for all is not to guarantee everyone a good life–it is to try and give everyone an equal chance at a good life. If higher ed is highly correlated to escaping poverty and upward economic mobility, then college costs raising at a rate 11 times faster than average income is a form of classism.
- AlgorithmicTime 6y agoHigh School education was considered an actual achievement perhaps 70 years ago. Not everyone graduated. But we noticed that people who graduated high school did better, on average. So we decided to encourage people to graduate high school. Partially by force, partially by lowering standards. Now, practically everyone graduates high school, so a high school diploma is useless as a signal of quality. And so, we plan to do the same to the Bachelor's degree, except that we aren't making that free at the point of education.
- ryanmarsh 6y agoWe give everyone in the U.S. high school education and we don't make the claims you make above. We used too. A high school education meant something to my grandparents.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cptnapalm 6y agoI once picked up a hundred year old Latin schoolbook meant for grade schoolers (fifth grade, I think). It was significantly more information dense than the college course Latin textbook I had.
- rbanffy 6y agoLatin was much more important a hundred years ago than it is today. Also, a college education was not a given back then. OTOH, I can imagine the HS-level Physics books were very different from the ones we studied with, with different subjects given different depths.
- enkid 6y agoThere are some things that does make everyone more successful. More education is overall better for society, even if it's no longer a guarantee of "success." Some things don't really get diluted but can enrich the lives of anyone they are involved in (if we disassociate the word "success" from a comparative cycle). For example, healthcare, books, digital entertainment, internet connectivity. The comparative advantage goes down, but the impact to the individual does not.
- throwawaygh 6y agoThat's why you mostly see this push-back in places with horrendously broken higher ed systems.
- mrits 6y agoI think we are witnessing first hand why more education is not always overall better. There isn't much point in having everyone learn British Literature on a 30 year payment plan.
- chosenbreed37 6y agoPerhaps we need erudition or an education that is not as formalised and compartmentalized as it seems to be. I happen there is something to be gained from literature for example. But a degree is not necessary for that purpose. The degree ends up being used for signalling or to provide some structure to 3 to 4 years between high school and full-time employment.
- shredprez 6y agoIt's important to distinguish between education and the business of education. I don't think I believe more education can ever be a bad thing. But the business of education in the US is an absolute nightmare that corrupts the spirit of learning it ought to protect, and I agree more of that business will not make things better for students.
- vezycash 6y ago> It's important to distinguish between education and the business of education. distinguish between education and schooling
- randomdata 6y agoMore importantly, correlation does not imply causation. Just because people born to the right family, who are free of crippling disability and disease, and possess the innate traits that enable one to be successful in the workplace also happen to go to school does not mean that going to school will change the traits you were born with, reverse the disabilities you have, and see you adopted by another family. Funny that was missed when it is the first thing you learn when you head down the road to attaining a degree.
- seneca 6y agoGiving everyone some baseline of education, I think, can be considered a good that doesn't need to be further explained. Reading/writing, basic math and science etc. Increasing the baseline to more advanced learning means a more informed general population, and therefore much more likely technical advancement and wealth creation. It is the people that are seen as going beyond that education baseline that are the elite, and get the best careers and the most success generally (ignoring other factors for the purpose of this conversation). As you increase the baseline, what it takes to be elite also increases accordingly. I think we can all agree that it is inherently true that not everyone can be elite, in the same way that it's impossible for everyone to be above average, which is what I think you're getting at. I think what this view may fail to consider is that the benefits of the baseline come to resemble what was previously considered elite as overall wealth increases. Middle class people now have larger homes, more vehicles, more luxury etc. than the lower-tier elites (ignoring the billionaire class here) did 100 years ago. That increase of the baseline living standard is tied to, though very much lags, the baseline of education. Put another way, we can not eliminate the relative gap between the baseline and the elite, but, in absolute terms, as the baseline comes to meet what was previously elite in education the baseline well-being and standards of living also come to meet what was previously elite.
- analog31 6y agoLet's turn this around. Suppose we cut back on education, to inflate its value while ensuring that the population as a whole is less educated. This should make us more prosperous. An example is our widespread prosperity thanks to the high value of medical doctors. It doesn't make sense.