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U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers
- version_five 3y agoSort of related, ontario is dropping university requirements for police: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/ontario-eliminating-education-requirement-to-become-police-officers https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/ontario-eliminating-edu... I wonder if it's coincidence or the start of a trend back to sanity about job qualifications. Ironically, by becoming almost ubiquitous, university education also becomes irrelevant.
- flavius29663 3y agoAKA: If everyone is super, then nobody is
- kevviiinn 3y ago[flagged]
- coding123 3y agoHumanity is obviously a strong-link system.
- augment003 3y agoI think the implication is that a college degree no longer represents progress.
- kevviiinn 3y agoDid it ever represent progress? What I was saying is that the increased baseline of education for the populace is progress, not that a degree represents progress itself
- leetcrew 3y agounironically yes? if a job "requires" a BA/BS, but realistically could be done by the median highschool graduate, that's four years off the person's life for no real reason. of course, there are other benefits of higher education. but credential creep itself is a signal of waste, not progress.
- johngladtj 3y agoWhen those standards cost resources to acquire and maintain without providing a return? Yes, absolutely that's harmful for humanity in general
- kevviiinn 3y agoThe return is a more educated populace, what's harmful for humanity in general is thinking about everything in monetary terms
- uejfiweun 3y agoAstounding to me how deep that movie was for a kids movie, how DIFFERENT it is from the types of morals and values that are pushed in modern films, and how well it holds up today.
- jl6 3y agoTen years later, we learned that if everything is awesome, nothing is awesome.
- kevviiinn 3y agoPolice should definitely be more highly educated, we see the result of them not being so in the US
- KMag 3y agoI strongly suspect the issues you're referring to are much more an issue with attitude and mindset, rather than directly with education. I think there are probably much more efficient ways to adjust attitude and mindset than broad-based college education. I'm glad I got a broad-based education. It was definitely the right thing for me, but I think it's a hammer being applied to too many problems that aren't roughly nail-shaped.
- gtop3 3y agoI think a college education is a great screening tool for determining levels of conscientiousness, ability to communicate, and ability to follow directions. All great things. My worst interactions with police officers all involved individuals that were low on these skills.
- giantg2 3y agoA lot of that can go out the window when they are placed in the position of power (rather than the professor) and are surrounded by existing officers. If I remember right, there are some studies about police group dynamics as a factor in the type and severity of force used (group size was positively correlated with level of force).
- version_five 3y agoIt's not clear to me that a bunch of psychology grads would naturally be better cops. If anything, police forces would be better investing in more internal training and apprenticeship that's actually related to policing.
- kevviiinn 3y agoNobody said anything about what kind of degree let alone psychology Not only does a criminal justice degree already exist but we could even introduce a new BA degree in policing with the kind of training that would result in an improved police force
- nawgz 3y agoI don't think there's anything sane about the Police reducing their job requirements when we see how ripe for abuse the position is and how unstable it has become in the US based on similar reductions. I also don't really understand how university education is "almost ubiquitous"; I see that the prevalence of Bachelor's degrees amongst adults is under 40%. Is the claim that the demographic of 21-32 would have a percentage like 70% or what?
- coding123 3y ago[flagged]
- hnuser0000 3y ago"yeah yeah yeah drop the college requirements for everyone", who is saying this?
- coding123 3y agoIt's like most of the comments on the page you're looking at.
- ModernMech 3y agoNeither of those things are being said here. You're just amusing yourself.
- augment003 3y agoCollege degrees don’t seem to have done anything to make the police less abusive. Why waste money on them when we could instead give police better police training and resources?
- bfeynman 3y agoVery idealistic to think that money would be reallocated to give police better training and resources, unless you mean military grade equipment for responding to domestic disputes. One can dream though...
- photochemsyn 3y agoI'd prefer police officers with EMT (and preferably paramedic) training to those with four-year sociology degrees. Knowledge of DNA and computer forensic methods and necessities, though, would probably improve their chances of getting promoted, as would legal training. However, those skills could easily be learned at two-year community college progams. All in all, I think this kind of focus would lead to a more professional police force.
- Arainach 3y agoI disagree. Having done a minor in criminal justice, officers, lawmakers, and others involved in the justice system could absolutely benefit from exposure to sociology and academic CJ. The American "justice" system is a travesty and continues following methods that we've known not to work for many decades. To fix the system we need the folks inside it to understand the system. Part of that is education. Part of that is hiring officers who understand the system and want to improve and protect rather than a jobs system for those who want to exercise power over others.
- sandworm101 3y ago>> To fix the system we need the folks inside it to understand the system. Nope. The American justice system does not control itself. It is bound by laws and codes of practice dictated to it by outsiders, those good-idea people who's entire understanding of law comes from a highschool history or civics class they barely remember. It is as bad as it is because the general public honestly want it that way. Rough and violent justice is baked into American culture as much as guns and alcohol. >>Part of that is education. I agree, but it isn't the people in the system that need an education. It is the voting public outside who need the better understanding.
- txru 3y agoI think a few things happened in 2020 that show that at least some of the general public are unhappy and want changes...
- 3y ago
- metalspot 3y agoif a job has specific knowledge and skills requirements then it needs to have an objective test that people pass to be able to do the job. that is the only way to eliminate the systemic discrimination that the university system and degree requirements propagate. almost all serious jobs already have objective skills tests and licensing requirements for employment: doctors, lawyers, financial services, heavy equipment operators, etc, etc, etc. adding degree requirements on top of those licensing requirements cannot possibly add any additional benefit but it is obviously discriminatory against many marginalized groups.
- sokoloff 3y agoI'm 100% on-board with requiring an actual med school degree for my doctor rather than a skills-based test.
- BeFlatXIII 3y agoHow would a degree be a stronger signal of competency than a standardized skills-based test?
- sokoloff 3y agoGP seemed to be suggesting replacing the degree requirement with a skills-based test. For doctors, I'm perfectly comfortable requiring both and do not accept the replacement of a degree with a skills-based test.
- cjdoc29 3y agoHard agree, I'd rather not leetcode-ify* the health system. Nor do I want to see swaths of businesses dedicated to cracking the medical leetcode interview. *because it really feels as if some companies translate leetcode skills to actual skills
- kaitai 3y agoI find this to be a slightly weird argument. Med school degrees do have varying levels of quality. Moreover, in the US, you cannot be licensed without residency -- residency is practicing under supervision, essentially a skills-based set of active tests. Then after the residency program many physicians go for board certification, which is additional study and tests (run by a professional cabal that makes a ton of money off of questions about beaver fever, for instance). Well, anyhow, you already do require skills-based assessment if you are seeing licensed physicians in the US. They don't let ppl practice with only book learning.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- PakG1 3y agoI don't need police to be highly educated necessarily. I do need police to be psychologically balanced and show calm restraint. Is there a way we can put that in the job requirements and use it as hiring criteria?
- version_five 3y agoI'd say that's part initial screening, part training, and part willingness to fire people that turn out to be unsuitable. All of that is helped by having access to a broader candidate pool, such as by not imposing arbitrary education requirements. Something related that's often discussed in law enforcement and military is the idea of being able to hire directly into some upper specialist positions without the person having to rise through the ranks. This is sort of the opposite, admitting that some senior positions do not need an arbitrary field experience requirement. In both cases, it's about better matching the requirements and subsequent training and career progression to what's actually needed for the job. This kind of rationalization is the upside of a tight labor market.
- ngngngng 3y agoHave you ever had interactions with police? Did you find them psychologically balanced?
- ceejayoz 3y agoThe answer to this may vary heavily by country, local jurisdiction, and certain demographic characteristics of the person interacting with police.
- dghlsakjg 3y agoI don't need police to have a 4-year degree (or a 2-year degree), but I would like them to be highly educated and trained.
- mkoubaa 3y agoSystematically, I think the answer is no. Whether or not this is a encouraging or discouraging answer depends on the extent to which you expect systems to solve human problems.
- whitemary 3y agoIt's a trend towards lower wages. That's all.
- mkoubaa 3y agoLower wages without crippling student loans is a net positive for most people
- ok123456 3y agoIt's Goodhart's law in action. If having a four year degree becomes just a checkbox, there will be easier and easier ways of getting that checkbox. There will be rent-seeking entities that will facilitate this like degree mills and dubious online programs. It no longer becomes a qualification that the person has gained any skills, but only that they were able to finance paying tens of thousands of dollars to participate in a few discussion threads. It was only a matter of time for people to realise that requiring degrees for jobs that don't really need them is just cargo-culting.
- Taikonerd 3y agoI'm worried that the same logic might cut the other way: "the easier it is to get that piece of paper, the worse you look for not getting it."
- SoftTalker 3y agoIt's not just degree mills. It's mainstream colleges and universities. They are all staring a demographic "enrollment cliff" in the face and are having to drop admissions standards to keep their enrollment numbers up. Academic requirements are going by the wayside; if you can't complete an assignment, you'll be given more time, or an alternative. Nobody fails anymore unless they just absolutely don't show up, schools can't afford to lose students.
- chongli 3y agoNot all. I definitely believe large numbers of liberal arts schools are having problems. But my school (University of Waterloo) has only seen dramatic surges in enrolment over the past 5 years. They're putting up new buildings like crazy just to accommodate all of them! And we're not talking sports centres or rec complexes, we're talking about big lecture halls and buildings full of classrooms and study spaces!
- version_five 3y agoI don't know Waterloo's situation but I know that money for new buildings is largely decoupled from need for capacity and is mainly tied to government make-work projects. I remember during the 2008 "economic action plan" universities got all kinds of buildings. It was entirely because the government was giving free money away to stimulate growth.
- taylodl 3y agoSoooo...education beyond the 3rd grade is irrelevant? I know I'm being snarky, but c'mon man! It wasn't that long ago the same could be said (and was said) for education past the 3rd grade, then the discussion moved to education past the 8th grade, and now it's moved to education past the 12th grade. It's just a rehash of the same, tired argument justifying a poorly-educated populace which makes for a poorly-educated electorate, which tends to be more susceptible to populism.
- catiopatio 3y agoThis is a false equivalency. The demand for higher education has outstripped the supply of students capable of making real use of it, and so standards have been lowered. The value of the education provided — and the value of the degree received — has dropped precipitously. Up until the 50s/60s, education past the 12 grade was the exception, not the rule. A degree was valuable because not everyone had the capacity to attain it.
- taylodl 3y agoI’m just going to say it - the statement “ The demand for higher education has outstripped the supply of students capable of making real use of it” is an extremely ignorant and short-sighted view of education. I expect better from the folks on HN.
- catiopatio 3y ago“Harrumph! You’re ignorant!” says nothing at all. What am I ignorant of? How am I wrong?
- babelthuap 3y ago[flagged]
- rcme 3y agoApparently you can just lie about it if people ask.
- TheRealPomax 3y agoYou can lie about anything people ask you. That's lying's whole thing.
- rcme 3y agoI was referring to George Santos, who has lied extensively about his entire history yet still serves as a sitting representative.
- TheRealPomax 3y agoGood qualifier. Some might have thought you were talking about Obama.
- jewayne 3y ago> Don't even need to show a birth certificate Fun fact: Trump rode birtherism all the way to the presidency, then never showed his own birth certificate.
- jseliger 3y agoGood: https://seliger.com/2017/06/16/rare-good-political-news-boosting-apprenticeships/ https://seliger.com/2017/06/16/rare-good-political-news-boos.... College requirements have too many false positives and false negatives.
- UhUhUhUh 3y agoI like money tho....
- tandr 3y agoIs this a reference to "Idiocracy"?
- bell-cot 3y agoI've never heard any justification for having "college education" as a job requirement. Or at least no justification that didn't amount to "keep out people who aren't like us", or "pretend to be competent", or "posture as exclusive".
- efitz 3y agoA college degree is a signaling mechanism that you are willing to stick it out until the end in a large bureaucratic environment and not quit. An Ivy League degree is a signal that “you’re one of us”.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- willcipriano 3y agoThose sound like just the people you want to hire if you want to build a lumbering bureaucratic organization.
- gtop3 3y agoDo you think U.S. Representative Staffers are not interacting with lumbering bureaucratic organizations? Being able to navigate and succeed in these organizations is a skill every organization with employees needs.
- anigbrowl 3y agoYes, but what if you want to alter, restructure, or abolish parts of that bureaucratic apparatus? A lot of US officialdom (and business) is operated by unquestioning drones.
- TheFreim 3y agoThis is correct. It proves you're willing to jump through hoops and not think enough for yourself, since being creative often means diverging from the grading criteria.
- chaps 3y agoIt's such a silly requirement. One of the few local government jobs I tried to applied for denied me immediately because I don't have a degree. The requirement is built on top of a decades-long lawsuit about political patronage, where agencies are required to write very explicit hiring rules. I imagine modifications to the hiring rules for college degree requirements would require a lot of legal review before they make any changes. It's possible to get exceptions, but they're narrow and wouldn't have applied for me.
- the_only_law 3y agoPersonally, I found local government east to get into. When I worked for a state government it was easy as hell to get (but compensation was abysmal in a rather poor state) But man federal jobs. I don’t think I’ve ever seen as good an example of choosing beggars. There are even jobs I’d be 100% willing to take the massive paycut for, but I will never qualify because I don’t satisfy the bureaucratic box tickers.
- whitemary 3y agoThis is also a silly solution. There is no shortage of people with college degrees. The only result will be lower wages. I am speaking as a SWE who only recently received a degree late in life, purely to assist in my next job search, which I don't expect to be soon. I am not defending such accreditation nonsense.
- chaps 3y agoI'm confused by your post since for one, I never suggested a solution.. but also your post seems to be calling the removal of accreditation silly, but also calling accreditation nonsense. So you seem to be conflicted?
- hedora 3y agoI wish they’d require PhD’s (or 10+ years technical industry experience) in related fields for science advisors.
- whydoyoucare 3y agoUniversity education has a been a "baseline" to determine qualified candidates. It also sorta implies broadened horizons, overall mature thought process, and several other qualities that are desirable the advisors/staffers. What other alternatives exists to University education that impart the same level of knowledge and understanding to an individual that can be consistently measured? If education is expensive, then making it less expensive seems to be the natural solution than eliminating its requirement. Seems this is another virtue signaling in the name of equity that is taking the country back than forward. Reminds me of UCs' eliminating SAT in the name of equity, or how Palo Alto and Culver City (both in California) eliminated AP (Advanced Placement) courses because not everyone can take those.
- jcrawfordor 3y agoWork experience. Even the federal government mostly recognizes enough years of work experience as equivalent to an undergraduate degree, although the paygrade specs tend to want a 2-1 ratio (i.e. 8 years of work experience is considered equivalent to an undergraduate degree). It's hard to articulate many position-relevant benefits of an undergraduate education that people won't also gain from sufficient years working in the field.
- whydoyoucare 3y agoIt is rare to gain relevant work experience without having a basic framework for the said work, and consistency to measure that basic framework from a pool of candidates, both which come from college/university education. Equivalency can be established for senior positions, not entry level ones. I assume the staffers do have entry level positions. Can a plumber or an electrician claim to possess experience to become a staffer? I doubt it. What is going to happen is most staffing positions will be filled by senior work equivalency, while entry level positions will be eliminated. Fast forward a few decades, and there will be no eligible candidates for staffer positions.
- jcrawfordor 3y agoHonestly, tradework like plumbing or electrical might be a surprisingly good qualification for entry-level congressional staff positions. Project management, scheduling, finance, and perhaps most importantly dealing with (sometimes pissed off) customers/constituents and the tradeoffs of what is possible, versus feasible, versus affordable. Realistically a lot of the function of undergraduate degrees (in fields without specific technical education expectations) is to filter for people who have a basic ability to plan and complete work, meet requirements, etc. A huge range of entry-level jobs require these same skills. Many high-school educated office assistants have delivered larger projects under more pressure than a typical college graduate, and usually gained more applied knowledge in business/public administration while doing so. The main function that degrees tend to offer here is just easy comparability, but I think practical experience hiring in many fields shows that college degrees do not actually reflect the level of consistency in outcomes that hiring managers wish they did. College degrees do have some advantage, and not requiring them will probably mean that you interview more candidates to find a fit, but I don't think either of those effects are as big as you might think.
- dsfyu404ed 3y agoI appreciate the gesture but let's be real here. It's not like the requirement ever mattered. Just like a white house internship, nobody was getting a job as a congressional staffer without a recommendation from someone worth listening to.
- whydoyoucare 3y agoBy eliminating the requirement, the exact thing you lament about has been legalized. Now they have taken away whatever power we had as citizens to demand changes.
- elil17 3y agoI've heard it's actually not that hard to be a congressional staffer on the house side, especially if you're willing to work for someone unpopular. It is not however, the job that most people think it is. You mostly answer calls from constituents.
- dopeboy 3y agoFormer congressional intern and WH intern (and later WH staff) here - it's possible to get those internships without a recommendation from someone worth listening to. I would go so far as to say it's mildly common.
- anon_user123 3y agoCan confirm - there are always some folks who slip by the nepo. My best friend became a WH Intern with no particular 'in' except for his past [hard] work with a state campaign.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- undersuit 3y agoWe should drop staffers; replace them with a number of representatives closer to the original 1:30,000 in the Constitution. Any direct report to a Representative should be another elected Representative not an employee, if direct reports must exist. Aspiring politicians should work their way up from the state and local level, which has it's own set of problems holding back my ideas. The current system is just a lobbyist recruitment system.
- elil17 3y agoI think there's a huge benefit to having politicians work in teams because modern laws are so complex that you need some specialization of labor to read and write them.
- undersuit 3y agoWhy can't the individuals with specialization of labor be elected? You have a pool of 11000+ Representatives with the original ratio. I can even conceive of Representatives running on the basis of their knowledge in such a system.
- standardly 3y agoYou thought outside the box, and were downvoted.. Some may not agree with your general idea, but we need more of this kind of discourse.
- hangonhn 3y agoTangentially related, at my current job we do not filter candidates by certain "top schools" and it has lead to the most diverse (ethnic, gender, vocational background, social economic, nationality, etc.) team of software engineers I've ever worked on. This is in sharp contrast to all my previous jobs where they consistently filter by a list of schools. Obviously this is not a silver bullet but it's quite shocking to realize how many really qualified candidates (and now amazing coworkers) are filtered out that way. We still have engineers from Berkeley, the Ivies, etc. but our most common school is SJSU and this is the best team I've ever worked on in terms of talent, cohesiveness, and kindness.
- guynamedloren 3y agoI'm clearly naive and haven't worked closely enough to filtering stage of of the hiring process, but nevertheless.. I'm shocked to hear that there was a deliberate and explicit filtering by a list of "top schools. An implicit look at the school and some dose of bias, okay sure, I could see it, but an explicit filter? Wow.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 3y agoThere is a reason why in America there is an incredible focus on getting into certain schools, and follow-up obsession about what school you went to afterwards. There's a lot of 'brand name' focus and historically these schools have offered networking opportunities that far outweigh the actual academic quality (at the undergrad level). I always found it bizarre coming from a country where there isn't some idea of an ivy league-set of schools.
- rahimnathwani 3y agoIn some industries that's the norm. I did my MBA at Oxford (which, at least at the time, was not well-known for its MBA program). A recruiter at an investment bank told me that, since Oxford wasn't on their list of target schools for post-MBA hiring, they wouldn't even look at my CV until and unless they were unable to fill their associate-level positions with people from those target schools.
- 3y ago
- GartzenDeHaes 3y agoHer cronies must not have degrees. Nothing to see here.
- ilamont 3y agoIt's time to recognize that legal or organizational requirements for certain professions and government jobs to hold a college degree is a burden not only to talented people who are otherwise qualified to do the job, but leads to numerous burdens on society. These requirements have led to for-profit diploma mills, "nonprofit" universities charging $80k per year leading to billions in student debt that may never be paid off, and people who play the system to pad their salaries for no real benefit to the organizations or the people they serve. For instance, in my state, billions in additional salary and pensions have been paid out over the past 50+ years to corrections and police officers who get a graduate degree. It's part of the "Quinn Bill" (https://www.mass.edu/osfa/initiatives/pcipp.asp https://www.mass.edu/osfa/initiatives/pcipp.asp) which dates to the Johnson Administration! In 1967, the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice (the Johnson Crime Commission) released a report recommending more education for police officers. It said in order for the quality and effectiveness of American criminal justice to improve, its practitioners needed better training. A friend who's a cop says the graduate degree programs that have sprung up to serve the Quinn Bill market are a complete joke, but everyone with a college degree completes them to boost their salaries, which carries over to their pensions. Note that police already get rigorous training outside of these programs in areas such as accident reconstruction, de-escalation techniques, forensics, etc. Moreover, you don't even need a degree to become a police officer or corrections officer. In New England states are dropping age requirements to 18 or 19, because there is such a big shortage of staff: https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/02/27/essex-county-sheriff-lowers-minimum-age-correction-officer-shortage https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/02/27/essex-county-sheriff-lo...
- AlbertCory 3y agoThere's a story in Obama's bio (I think) where he went down to the local Chicago Democratic Party office to volunteer. Someone could find the reference if I'm not GPT-3'ing this. The guy behind the desk said, "Who sent you?" (meaning, "what Party official?") Obama said, "Nobody." So the guy sent him away, with "We don't want nobody nobody sent!" They didn't ask where he went to school, though.
- troutwine 3y agoMy understanding is this anecdote originates with Abner Mikva. It is Chicagoland but from the 1940s.
- AlbertCory 3y agoThanks. Fortunately I allowed for some uncertainty there.
- squokko 3y agoAs everyone drops every kind of requirement in the name of diversity, there is going to be a huge opportunity to set objective evaluation bars and get extremely high performers. The orgs will be 75% Asian though.
- gnicholas 3y agoThis is really great. I've been talking with friends who have high schoolers, and it's clear that the college preparation and application process is incredibly stressful, time-consuming, and expensive. And that's for the kids who are a reasonably good fit for college, and who have supportive parents. But so much of the market value of a college degree is in the signaling (just showing you were smart enough to get in) that it doesn't make sense to spend all this time, money, and heartache on this process. It's an arms-race dilemma for students and families, so it's hard to opt out of. But the more employers that move in this direction, the better things will be for lots of kids, and families.
- cgearhart 3y agoOn the flip side… I have two high school seniors. We have the resources and support they could need, but they have both opted out of all forms of college at this point. (They wouldn’t even fill out an application when I offered to pay them to apply, and refused to take any HS classes that were not graduation requirements as seniors.) I have tried to make the point that they owe it to their future self to keep their options open, but they just don’t care. Now their friends are being accepted to college and starting to talk about going away for school…and I’m starting to see the first cracks of regret. I wonder if they’ll have more stress or less in the long run given their choices. It definitely feels like this generation is skeptical of college, but very few are truly opting out.
- gnicholas 3y agoWhat do your kids plan to do after HS? If they regret the decision after seeing their friends go off to college, couldn't they apply next year and say they took a gap year to do all the things they missed out on during COVID, or some such thing?
- cgearhart 3y agoThey don’t really have plans. (This is part of the problem.) My plan is to ask them to get jobs & take some increased responsibility for their own needs & wants after high school. I’m pretty willing to support them if they have _some_ kind of plan (start a company? Volunteer somewhere? Sure.) You never know, they might apply to college in a year (or later), but they’ll still live with choices like not taking any advanced/honors or elective classes in high school—and just generally not applying themselves while they were there. COVID certainly did them no favors, but at some point that’s not a very good excuse anymore.
- wolverine876 3y agoInstead of better educating our population, the low-tax / anti-intellectual / authoritarian-reactionaries have convinced the population that they don't need education. With education, they might aim for socio-economic advancement (remember the American Dream?), think for themselves, challenge the established order (edit: i.e., they might decide to become the powerful and the leaders themselves). Now they know their places - don't get an education, and take a job where you won't ever need one. Sad to see the American Dream abandoned and people just giving up. Of course, the wealthy kids still get the education - they are in a different class in our new class-based system. Also, education costs money, and that is the hardline priority over everything, including fundamental human welfare such as health care and education.
- majormajor 3y agoMost college education right now opens up very little in terms of "socio-economic advancement" besides being "ticks the right box" on an application. Which is basically the opposite of "think for themselves, challenge the established order." The status quo there isn't great; the wealthy were getting very different college degrees anyway and going into very different jobs.
- wolverine876 3y agoWhat is your basis for that claim? The fact is that people earn far more with a college degree. The rest is baseless speculation.
- kaitai 3y agoI have a friend with no college degree but a number of certifications in the insurance industry and most of a master's degree in a humanities field. Should said friend be allowed to proofread communications going out from Angie Craig's office? I have a friend with an associate's degree who has great customer service skills. Should said friend be allowed to be a receptionist for Angie Craig? I love education, I indulged in several degrees beyond college. I use those for highly specialized work now. But my spouse works at a hospital that literally can't carry out specialty surgeries right now because they can't hire enough low-paid staff for overnight support (not medical staff, but the other warm bodies who need to be around) and they can't staff the phone room for appointments, because they require a college degree of the person who calls you to confirm if 8 am will work or not. Folks with college degrees want to do something with their degree beyond confirming that 8 am is still good -- and can get paid more just about anywhere else. Plenty of my lower-income friends & neighbors would've loved to have at least some college. But how do you pay $20k a year while also paying $10k for daycare and >$18k for rent when you're making $44k a year, the median pay for a high school grad in MN right now? I applaud Angie Craig for opening up opportunities for advancement for talented people.
- sandworm101 3y agoRule one of politics: Don't train up your own replacements. Make sure you are always the most qualified person for everything. A good step to that is only hiring people without the qualifications they might one day use to replace you. How many representatives don't have college degree or at least don't claim to have degrees? Several do claim degrees they don't have, but I don't know of any that claim to have never attended some sort of post-secondary education.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 226_ebro_treaty 3y agoGreat, now it will just be a non-written requirement.
- anon_user123 3y agoLol at anyone who thinks this is for the reason people think. The real reason Craig's office did this is because there are a lot of political active, non college-educated DFL staffers. Many of them didn't go through college or just didn't to begin with. Many of these folks are non-white (particularly, Somali, where Minneapolis is one of the largest enclaves for Somali refugees in the US). This is just to let the very active, motivated, driven, and hard-working politicos like them into Congress. This is good. Source: I live in Craig's district and state/local politics.
- _8j50 3y agoI'll start by saying I have no problem with degrees and wish I had the time and money for one. Working in infosec, I have seen really smart hackers who have no degrees and talented folks with degrees. Degrees simply can't tell you how talented a person is. That said, they do tell you how adaptable a person can be to a corporate environment if they ever work in management. But also, degrees technical folks tend to think very much in a box or in a "political" mindset that you see in academia (teacher's pet, death by powerpoint,etc...). You would think college teaches people to think outside of the box but many have the "this is how we did it in school" mindset which is hard to unlearn and even grads from unk's that have respectable infosec programs lack some very basic undersranding of infosec fundamentals or awareness of current trends in offense or defense. Now my speculation is that college spends too much time giving students broad initial exposure and mostly in a theoretical framework. For at least half of a bachelor's degree they don't even touch the subject of what they majored in. Someone who has passion for the work and hands on IT or programming experience is much more likely to succeed than someone who relied on being spoonfed at school. But like I said, you do get talented people with degrees, it just doesn't tell you on it's own if they are qualified or not. I personally consider the modern college system an ancient holdover from british colonial era. Technology has changed too much to be this inflexible to education.
- kar5pt 3y agoGood for her. Equity-focused democrats should be setting the example here.