5 ms·

If you talk to these people though. They DO have bad beliefs. Let's not even talk about politics. Their goal is to get a kid a degree,(especially in groups that

If you talk to these people though. They DO have bad beliefs. Let's not even talk about politics. Their goal is to get a kid a degree,(especially in groups that dont normally get degrees) and many of them believe just having the degree to get past the job resume hurdles is good and helping people. They ignore the fact that the degree is supposed to be a proof of "This person has X skillsets at minimum". It no longer is. There is basically no job in the United States that cares if you have a high school diploma or GED other than government jobs. They are repeating this process with College right now. The College Diploma is now the new High School Diploma, and pretty soon jobs are gonna want Masters or Doctorates for entry level. This is a bad belief, they don't (or won't) understand that they are ruining and devaluing a thing by their actions and beliefs.

zozbot234 4y ago
You can't get a college degree without passing the College Algebra weedout course (let alone Calculus, which is required for the bulk of STEM courses), and you can only realistically pass College Algebra by getting a lot of rigorous math in K-12. Lowering the bar is doing every student a disservice, and the most vulnerable students will be the hardest hit.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- namelessoracle 4y ago
  You'd think that but there are work arounds. Yes pretty much every college requires "college algebra". But some schools have "college algebra for stem majors" vs "college algebra for non stem majors". Guess which one is easier, has lots of bonus credit and extra curricular stuff to earn extra credit. (You attended the college showing of "vagely related math movie?! Here's 10 points on your final!") And also grades on a curve. Also you only need 69.5 (and sometimes just a D!) to graduate. There's also other cheats/hacks. Like lots of state schools will let you transfer from a community college with credit for your "core courses", and some of those have questionable standards. There's also the fact that college algebra usually has some kind of test out or online option. There was a whole sub industry of "pay you to take the online test for me" at colleges for stuff like college algebra. Some of those courses did have some kind "you have to take 1 test in person so we know its you" rule. But they didnt check super heavily that you were actually that person other than a cursory examination of your drivers license name matched who was supposed to take the test. (and oh boy let me tell you about how covid and masks interacted with all of that) Dont get me started on the "Statistics for Sociology" that was different than actual "Statistics" (but fulfilled the Stats requirement for the degree) This is also ignoring that taking College Algebra to begin with IN COLLEGE. Was a major sign you were not a Stem Major. Stem Majors took that in high school and were taking at minimum precalculus. (and even that was viewed as the slow lane, you should be talking Calc 1 as a red blooded STEM freshman)
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    I do expect that such "workarounds" will always exist. I just don't think they're more realistic than just getting some good-enough math fundamentals in K-12, without mucking about with "data science" silliness. (Data literacy is of course appropriate to Science class, and the letter even mentions that.)
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    > pretty much every college requires "college algebra". Caltech didn't. In fact, they expect you to know calculus before entering. I didn't, and that nearly capsized my college career before it left the dock.
    - xvedejas 4y ago
      They now do have a remedial kind of class, "Math 1d", which is to be taken concurrently with Math 1a. I was placed into it after not trying very hard on my placement test, but they let me drop it when I told them I didn't need it.
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        > They now do have a remedial kind of class Sad to hear that. It suggests their admissions process has succumbed. When I attended, it was very rare for the admissions people to admit someone who couldn't do the work. I only knew one who couldn't.
        fphhotchips 4y ago
        Yeah, heaven forbid 17 year olds decide they want to take on a career in STEM later in High School. They must be real dummies. REAL engineers decide to be engineers as HS Freshmen and never waver from, struggle on, or doubt the One True Path. Colleges should only admit those who pledge themselves to the Guild of Software Engineering at 13, so we can keep the noble profession of building CRUD apps in JavaScript free of riffraff.
- TexanFeller 4y ago
  How the heck can you call college algebra a “weedout course”?! I was a math major and skipped over it to start college in Calc 2, but I saw my friends tutoring those intro classes and saw the work my professor-friends put into trying to make basic algebra accessible and get them over the line. They really did everything they could. Many students still struggled though because public high school utterly fails most people and/or those peoples brains just weren’t wired for math.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    > They really did everything they could. That's probably true. But there's just not much that you can do to teach years of junior high and high school math in a single college class, to students who never got the chance to seriously engage with that material because their school replaced actual math courses with this new "data science" thing (or for countless other reasons which would fully apply even today). "Weedout course" might not be the intention, but it's definitely the real-world outcome.
  - namelessoracle 4y ago
    Because a significant amount of people who attempt college fail at that course.
munk-a 4y ago
Given the situation on the ground you can comment that it'd be great to stop de-valuing college degrees but I think it's pretty clear that ship has sailed. A lot of jobs do unnecessarily demand college degrees, even going so far as to accept irrelevant degrees... anytime you see "Our ideal candidate has a BS from an accredited university" you can be confident that an arbitrary and discouraging requirement is being placed on the post. Now, in reality, a lot of employers don't actually care about those "requirements" but young people often don't realize that, and the ones that do can't be certain their uncertainty won't be invalidated by the time they secure a diploma. I don't have a specific comment on the policy under discussion, I'm not a californian and I'm not familiar with the specifics - but telling people "You'll be fine without a degree" isn't going to go over well and, honestly, is asking the recipient to accept a large risk regarding their future while you, an employed person, have already passed that hurdle. American colleges definitely have issues with over enrollment but even if wanting that state is a "bad belief", it's certainly an accurate belief.
- nradov 4y ago
  Employers only demand unnecessary college degrees because it's a quick and easy way to filter down a huge stack of applications. If there were fewer college grads available in the labor market then employers will just remove that filter and hire based on other criteria. It's not like they're going to leave those jobs open.
  - munk-a 4y ago
    Does the why materially change what new market entrants experience? Right now a good chunk of High School students assume a college education will be necessary to get any sort of good job, unless we can reverse that conception[1] college will remain an assumed necessity for most folks. I don't disagree at all that it's mostly BS, but, much like the stock market, it is functioning primarily on the social valuation - and currently degrees are seen as close to a necessity to enter the job market. 1. The only thing I've seen on this front is some advertising for trades work which can pay equal or better to non-SF software engineers.
- hyperdimension 4y ago
mr_toad 4y ago
In an ideal world employers would have better ways of assessing ability and students could go to college to learn, rather than take tests.

zozbot234 4y ago

You can't get a college degree without passing the College Algebra weedout course (let alone Calculus, which is required for the bulk of STEM courses), and you can only realistically pass College Algebra by getting a lot of rigorous math in K-12. Lowering the bar is doing every student a disservice, and the most vulnerable students will be the hardest hit.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
namelessoracle 4y ago
You'd think that but there are work arounds. Yes pretty much every college requires "college algebra". But some schools have "college algebra for stem majors" vs "college algebra for non stem majors". Guess which one is easier, has lots of bonus credit and extra curricular stuff to earn extra credit. (You attended the college showing of "vagely related math movie?! Here's 10 points on your final!") And also grades on a curve. Also you only need 69.5 (and sometimes just a D!) to graduate. There's also other cheats/hacks. Like lots of state schools will let you transfer from a community college with credit for your "core courses", and some of those have questionable standards. There's also the fact that college algebra usually has some kind of test out or online option. There was a whole sub industry of "pay you to take the online test for me" at colleges for stuff like college algebra. Some of those courses did have some kind "you have to take 1 test in person so we know its you" rule. But they didnt check super heavily that you were actually that person other than a cursory examination of your drivers license name matched who was supposed to take the test. (and oh boy let me tell you about how covid and masks interacted with all of that) Dont get me started on the "Statistics for Sociology" that was different than actual "Statistics" (but fulfilled the Stats requirement for the degree) This is also ignoring that taking College Algebra to begin with IN COLLEGE. Was a major sign you were not a Stem Major. Stem Majors took that in high school and were taking at minimum precalculus. (and even that was viewed as the slow lane, you should be talking Calc 1 as a red blooded STEM freshman)
- zozbot234 4y ago
  I do expect that such "workarounds" will always exist. I just don't think they're more realistic than just getting some good-enough math fundamentals in K-12, without mucking about with "data science" silliness. (Data literacy is of course appropriate to Science class, and the letter even mentions that.)
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > pretty much every college requires "college algebra". Caltech didn't. In fact, they expect you to know calculus before entering. I didn't, and that nearly capsized my college career before it left the dock.
  - xvedejas 4y ago
    They now do have a remedial kind of class, "Math 1d", which is to be taken concurrently with Math 1a. I was placed into it after not trying very hard on my placement test, but they let me drop it when I told them I didn't need it.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      > They now do have a remedial kind of class Sad to hear that. It suggests their admissions process has succumbed. When I attended, it was very rare for the admissions people to admit someone who couldn't do the work. I only knew one who couldn't.
      - fphhotchips 4y ago
        Yeah, heaven forbid 17 year olds decide they want to take on a career in STEM later in High School. They must be real dummies. REAL engineers decide to be engineers as HS Freshmen and never waver from, struggle on, or doubt the One True Path. Colleges should only admit those who pledge themselves to the Guild of Software Engineering at 13, so we can keep the noble profession of building CRUD apps in JavaScript free of riffraff.
TexanFeller 4y ago
How the heck can you call college algebra a “weedout course”?! I was a math major and skipped over it to start college in Calc 2, but I saw my friends tutoring those intro classes and saw the work my professor-friends put into trying to make basic algebra accessible and get them over the line. They really did everything they could. Many students still struggled though because public high school utterly fails most people and/or those peoples brains just weren’t wired for math.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  > They really did everything they could. That's probably true. But there's just not much that you can do to teach years of junior high and high school math in a single college class, to students who never got the chance to seriously engage with that material because their school replaced actual math courses with this new "data science" thing (or for countless other reasons which would fully apply even today). "Weedout course" might not be the intention, but it's definitely the real-world outcome.
- namelessoracle 4y ago
  Because a significant amount of people who attempt college fail at that course.

munk-a 4y ago

Given the situation on the ground you can comment that it'd be great to stop de-valuing college degrees but I think it's pretty clear that ship has sailed. A lot of jobs do unnecessarily demand college degrees, even going so far as to accept irrelevant degrees... anytime you see "Our ideal candidate has a BS from an accredited university" you can be confident that an arbitrary and discouraging requirement is being placed on the post. Now, in reality, a lot of employers don't actually care about those "requirements" but young people often don't realize that, and the ones that do can't be certain their uncertainty won't be invalidated by the time they secure a diploma. I don't have a specific comment on the policy under discussion, I'm not a californian and I'm not familiar with the specifics - but telling people "You'll be fine without a degree" isn't going to go over well and, honestly, is asking the recipient to accept a large risk regarding their future while you, an employed person, have already passed that hurdle. American colleges definitely have issues with over enrollment but even if wanting that state is a "bad belief", it's certainly an accurate belief.

nradov 4y ago
Employers only demand unnecessary college degrees because it's a quick and easy way to filter down a huge stack of applications. If there were fewer college grads available in the labor market then employers will just remove that filter and hire based on other criteria. It's not like they're going to leave those jobs open.
- munk-a 4y ago
  Does the why materially change what new market entrants experience? Right now a good chunk of High School students assume a college education will be necessary to get any sort of good job, unless we can reverse that conception[1] college will remain an assumed necessity for most folks. I don't disagree at all that it's mostly BS, but, much like the stock market, it is functioning primarily on the social valuation - and currently degrees are seen as close to a necessity to enter the job market. 1. The only thing I've seen on this front is some advertising for trades work which can pay equal or better to non-SF software engineers.
hyperdimension 4y ago

mr_toad 4y ago

In an ideal world employers would have better ways of assessing ability and students could go to college to learn, rather than take tests.