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I personally think college-education is over rated as of today. The only reason education worked as a good model was because there was scarcity of Information a

by azharcs 18y ago

I personally think college-education is over rated as of today. The only reason education worked as a good model was because there was scarcity of Information and this information could be obtained only if you paid tons of money and joined college. Today times have changed drastically, a guy sitting in remote part of Africa(with a basic internet connection) can obtain the same information which the guy in Stanford or MIT is trying to obtain. Colleges surely had advantages a decade back like Mentors, Teachers, Abundant Information, Labs, Job Guarantee. But today Internet is replacing all these one by one and colleges today can't guarantee jobs. Unless colleges start offering something really substantial else they will have a tough time competing with internet educated population which is growing day by day.

un 18y ago
I would go further to say that the current system is disadvantaging rich countries immensely. I typical person without a college degree is likely to think he shouldn't even attempt to seek work such as IT (it's for those college educated types), and instead heads into the local service economy (further depressing wages there), instead of earning money for the country in globally based economy.
- kingkongrevenge 18y ago
  The certification system he's talking about would massively accelerate global outsourcing of US jobs. ISO 9000 certification in the 80s and 90s played a huge role in sending US manufacturing overseas. People were reluctant to believe that factories in various second and third world countries could be just as good. Then the certs proved pretty well that they were! Same deal now with personnel. Employers are sometimes reluctant to believe Indians or Vietnamese are on par with a four year American college grad. Sufficiently standard tests would prove they are. In other words, the US has coasted on reputation in a lot of ways and empirical approaches can damage that reputation.
  - un 18y ago
    But you're assuming outsourcing is bad for individuals in the US, whereas most indications are the opposite, it increases their wealth. The point about the nongrad IT worker is that he would be able to create more wealth than he would as a local service worker (in the same way as offshore workers do). Increasing production (and hence wealth) from all workers, whether offshore or in US is better for society than allowing inefficiencies and protectionism to prevail.
    - william42 18y ago
      "But you're assuming outsourcing is bad for individuals in the US, whereas most indications are the opposite, it increases their wealth." Evidence? I'm curious, mainly because I always hear about the Rust Belt and how it's been screwed over by outsourcing.
      - un 18y ago
        The decreasing cost of manufactured goods, increase in quality of them, and the increase in GDP that has occurred over the past 30 years. (You can argue much of this can be attributed to technology, but a large share of it is due to outsourcing - most things in dollar stores and walmart are not due to technology but outsourcing). The rustbelt is caused by their inability to compete with the better quality Japanese cars (and Japanese salaries are higher than in the rustbelt, you can't make the cheap labour for that).
        kingkongrevenge 18y ago
        Real median wages are flat or down in the US for the last 30 years. You can talk about the theoretical upsides to global free trade all you want. I'm a believer. But 2 billion people jumped into the labor pool and the reality in the US is that they made a wave that drowned a lot of people. Real wages are depressed. That's not to say there's any real alternative to full open participation in the global market, but your free-market cheer and pom-poms don't capture the full reality from a US worker perspective.

by azharcs 18y ago

un 18y ago

I would go further to say that the current system is disadvantaging rich countries immensely. I typical person without a college degree is likely to think he shouldn't even attempt to seek work such as IT (it's for those college educated types), and instead heads into the local service economy (further depressing wages there), instead of earning money for the country in globally based economy.

kingkongrevenge 18y ago
The certification system he's talking about would massively accelerate global outsourcing of US jobs. ISO 9000 certification in the 80s and 90s played a huge role in sending US manufacturing overseas. People were reluctant to believe that factories in various second and third world countries could be just as good. Then the certs proved pretty well that they were! Same deal now with personnel. Employers are sometimes reluctant to believe Indians or Vietnamese are on par with a four year American college grad. Sufficiently standard tests would prove they are. In other words, the US has coasted on reputation in a lot of ways and empirical approaches can damage that reputation.
- un 18y ago
  But you're assuming outsourcing is bad for individuals in the US, whereas most indications are the opposite, it increases their wealth. The point about the nongrad IT worker is that he would be able to create more wealth than he would as a local service worker (in the same way as offshore workers do). Increasing production (and hence wealth) from all workers, whether offshore or in US is better for society than allowing inefficiencies and protectionism to prevail.
  - william42 18y ago
    "But you're assuming outsourcing is bad for individuals in the US, whereas most indications are the opposite, it increases their wealth." Evidence? I'm curious, mainly because I always hear about the Rust Belt and how it's been screwed over by outsourcing.
    - un 18y ago
      The decreasing cost of manufactured goods, increase in quality of them, and the increase in GDP that has occurred over the past 30 years. (You can argue much of this can be attributed to technology, but a large share of it is due to outsourcing - most things in dollar stores and walmart are not due to technology but outsourcing). The rustbelt is caused by their inability to compete with the better quality Japanese cars (and Japanese salaries are higher than in the rustbelt, you can't make the cheap labour for that).
      - kingkongrevenge 18y ago
        Real median wages are flat or down in the US for the last 30 years. You can talk about the theoretical upsides to global free trade all you want. I'm a believer. But 2 billion people jumped into the labor pool and the reality in the US is that they made a wave that drowned a lot of people. Real wages are depressed. That's not to say there's any real alternative to full open participation in the global market, but your free-market cheer and pom-poms don't capture the full reality from a US worker perspective.