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The elephant in the room is that college doesn't teach you anything you need to know at a job. I'm not talking about the obvious exceptions like medicine or la

The elephant in the room is that college doesn't teach you anything you need to know at a job. I'm not talking about the obvious exceptions like medicine or law (though even that can be done as a conversion rather than an undergrad degree) or anything else where you literally need the paper that says you can do it. I'm also not talking about becoming a researcher, where obvious you need to know a bit of X to become a professor of X. I'm talking about the vast number of degrees that are not job specific. Business, economics, history, literature, and so on with humanities, but also math, chemistry, physics, and biology. There is no real reason an employer would care what you studied, because as a new graduate your job is to learn the business. Whether you were interested in one thing or another in college doesn't matter much, the main line is between math-tech stuff and not-math-tech stuff. Employers who reckon their work is techie will gravitate towards those graduates, while others will be open to anyone. All the degree signals is that you somehow gathered yourself and read a bunch of books and solved a bunch of questions. That's somehow supposed to be evidence that you can learn their business. Of course the problem is there's plenty of people who instead of learning Krebs cycle could just go directly into finance or accounting or any number of jobs without jumping through the hoops. The issue is that college has become a destination for so many smart kids, it's hard to imagine a smart kid who skips it. So absolutely everyone feels they need to go to college, and absolutely every employer thinks they need to hire just college grads. In terms of helping the economy, it's really not efficient. Everyone has to sit around for three or four years when they really want to be working, and everyone who can't find the money/time to do it is cut out from middle class aspirational jobs.

gruez 5y ago
>All the degree signals is that you somehow gathered yourself and read a bunch of books and solved a bunch of questions. That's somehow supposed to be evidence that you can learn their business. >[...] >In terms of helping the economy, it's really not efficient. Everyone has to sit around for three or four years when they really want to be working, and everyone who can't find the money/time to do it is cut out from middle class aspirational jobs. What's the alternative? Like you said yourself, employers want some sort of signal that you're reasonably smart and can put the work in. You can't really replace that with a 6 month bootcamp.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  Massive online learning/examination system, fewer places in university, reserved for people who actually are going to be professors. Everyone else sits at home and just learns the stuff and does the exams while driving an uber. It will take a lot less time to just jump the math hoops than to do four years of half holidays, eg my total university time was actually 96 weeks but spread over 4 years. So a couple of years of doing that and people can see you can learn stuff.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >Everyone else sits at home and just learns the stuff and does the exams while driving an uber. It will take a lot less time to just jump the math hoops than to do four years of half holidays, eg my total university time was actually 96 weeks but spread over 4 years. So a couple of years of doing that and people can see you can learn stuff. All that does is test whether you know the content, which you said yourself "doesn't teach you anything you need to know at a job". It doesn't tell the employer whether you can handle 4 years of assignments and showing up labs/tutorials. I suppose you could add those back, but then we're back to square one when it comes to the university experience.
    - lordnacho 5y ago
      It just needs to be done cheaper, in a way that doesn't waste so much time. Why make people do 4 years of slogging through umpteen courses when you can just do a few, and let that be your evidence they can do it? In the end there's just no way a course in some science can substitute for a job in business, so if you're going to use a course as your hurdle, why not just do a short one? You could also just say we'll have fewer students. That way businesses will have to choose between high school grads. But as it is now, very few people will want to be that guy who doesn't have a degree.
paulpauper 5y ago
60-70% of the adult population does not have a college degree. There is a huge potential pool of cheap, untapped labor right there. so why aren't more companies biting?
- kube-system 5y ago
  Because college is also a social filter. While some have said that there are highly motivated smart software engineers out there without a college degree, I have never actually seen one. If I did, I would absolutely hire them.
kube-system 5y ago
“A college degree will get you a good job” is the most incorrect meme that baby boomers ever came up with. Education, skills, and talent are all three entirely different things. Being educated does not get you a job. Being educated is step one. You also need to have: * a workplace that exists * the soft skills required to interact in that workplace * and ability to apply your education
honkycat 5y ago
I worked during the day and went to school at night. Honestly most people I know didn't do 100% school, they had a job while in uni. I agree the current debt-based solution is bad. But there is more to life than efficiency and numbers.

gruez 5y ago

>All the degree signals is that you somehow gathered yourself and read a bunch of books and solved a bunch of questions. That's somehow supposed to be evidence that you can learn their business. >[...] >In terms of helping the economy, it's really not efficient. Everyone has to sit around for three or four years when they really want to be working, and everyone who can't find the money/time to do it is cut out from middle class aspirational jobs. What's the alternative? Like you said yourself, employers want some sort of signal that you're reasonably smart and can put the work in. You can't really replace that with a 6 month bootcamp.

lordnacho 5y ago
Massive online learning/examination system, fewer places in university, reserved for people who actually are going to be professors. Everyone else sits at home and just learns the stuff and does the exams while driving an uber. It will take a lot less time to just jump the math hoops than to do four years of half holidays, eg my total university time was actually 96 weeks but spread over 4 years. So a couple of years of doing that and people can see you can learn stuff.
- gruez 5y ago
  >Everyone else sits at home and just learns the stuff and does the exams while driving an uber. It will take a lot less time to just jump the math hoops than to do four years of half holidays, eg my total university time was actually 96 weeks but spread over 4 years. So a couple of years of doing that and people can see you can learn stuff. All that does is test whether you know the content, which you said yourself "doesn't teach you anything you need to know at a job". It doesn't tell the employer whether you can handle 4 years of assignments and showing up labs/tutorials. I suppose you could add those back, but then we're back to square one when it comes to the university experience.
  - lordnacho 5y ago
    It just needs to be done cheaper, in a way that doesn't waste so much time. Why make people do 4 years of slogging through umpteen courses when you can just do a few, and let that be your evidence they can do it? In the end there's just no way a course in some science can substitute for a job in business, so if you're going to use a course as your hurdle, why not just do a short one? You could also just say we'll have fewer students. That way businesses will have to choose between high school grads. But as it is now, very few people will want to be that guy who doesn't have a degree.

paulpauper 5y ago

60-70% of the adult population does not have a college degree. There is a huge potential pool of cheap, untapped labor right there. so why aren't more companies biting?

kube-system 5y ago
Because college is also a social filter. While some have said that there are highly motivated smart software engineers out there without a college degree, I have never actually seen one. If I did, I would absolutely hire them.

kube-system 5y ago

“A college degree will get you a good job” is the most incorrect meme that baby boomers ever came up with. Education, skills, and talent are all three entirely different things. Being educated does not get you a job. Being educated is step one. You also need to have: * a workplace that exists * the soft skills required to interact in that workplace * and ability to apply your education

honkycat 5y ago

I worked during the day and went to school at night. Honestly most people I know didn't do 100% school, they had a job while in uni. I agree the current debt-based solution is bad. But there is more to life than efficiency and numbers.